


Siren Call

by Neyasochi



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (like extremely minor), Alternate Universe - Pirate, Anal Sex, Bottom Keith (Voltron), Captain Shiro (Voltron), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Frottage, M/M, Master & Commander-inspired, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Pirate Keith (Voltron), Siren Keith (Voltron), Siren Krolia, Slow Burn, Sparring, Swordfighting, Top Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:33:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 81,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27512353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyasochi/pseuds/Neyasochi
Summary: After Keith takes command of his own ship, his reputation billows into infamy in short order—a ruthless and unnaturally cunning pirate, too quick to be caught, a thorn in the sides of both the Empire and the Coalition. In spite of all the fear and awe his name inspires, though, it isn’t long before a certain navy captain picks up Keith’s trail and refuses to let him go.Captain Shirogane’s smile is soft. His wind-chapped lips part, drawing in a  half-breath before he speaks. "The way I see it, we have two courses of action. There is the one you are familiar with, which entails a trial in the nearest Coalition court.”“Followed by an afternoon hanging in the village square,” Keith tacks on, nodding. “Yeah, I’m familiar. What’s my other choice?”Shirogane clears his throat. “You are a very capable fighter and a natural at the helm. If I were to have my say, you would join my crew.”
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 258
Kudos: 410





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Baedelus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baedelus/gifts).



> Thank you Marlee for being so so so patient AND hashing through all of this with me!!
> 
> disclaimer: 90% of my naval knowledge comes from the 2003 Russell Crowe classic Master & Commander, so...

While her surviving crew cling to flotsam and struggle to salvage a few longboats, the Arusian merchant ship burns.

Keith turns and looks back at the wreckage once or twice, eyeing the smoke that billows off of the sea like some dark spectre. Things had quickly gotten out of hand, as they so often do among a crew of kill-mongering pirates.

While his men drain a barrel of rum and sift through chests of pilfered loot, Keith steers the _Songbird_ out into open water, letting the sloop get lost in the rolling waves and settling dusk. That rising column of soot and ash marks the horizon like a smudge of charcoal—a beacon to any roving ships of the Empire or the Coalition who might come looking to investigate.

Once he is satisfied that they’ve made it safely away, into the cover of the nighttime darkness sweeping over the sea, Keith entrusts the wheel to Rolo and strides down to the main deck to take stock of their haul.

There is a fair share already set aside for him, but even that is more than Keith wants or needs. He’s not one for spending gold on drink or company while they sit in port. He doesn’t like clutter in his cabin, either. While the crew watches on like greasy-beaked vultures, Keith cherrypicks a few pieces that catch his eye—a new pair of boots close to his size, a pretty letter-opener, a fine pistol, and a fat purse of gold to cover the _Songbird’s_ future repairs—and leaves everything else behind.

“Divy the rest up amongst yourselves,” he says once he’s done, a round of approving nods and cheers rising as he throws a small chest of coins and silver candlesticks back into the crew’s pile.

“To Captain Keith!” one of the older hands cries out, cup spilling over as he raises it high.

They’re in good spirits, the crew. Drunk on rum and victory. Pleased with their captain’s generosity. Content to continue deferring to him.

“To Captain Keith!”

The cry is echoed on three dozen sets of lips, and even after a year, the mantle still doesn’t sit quite right. _Captain._ A title Keith had never asked for, nor particularly wanted, but had fallen to him nonetheless. It’s a dangerous thing, being captain to these men, on this ship, upon these seas.

But if Keith keeps the _Songbird_ and her crew moving like the sleek-bodied sharks under the waves, there’s less trouble. And so long as the pockets of his inherited crew remain weighty with coin, and the galley filled with food and liquor, he can sleep with both eyes closed.

Gone are the days of making meager pickings off of local traders and taking the schooners of lesser nobles for ransom. Under Keith’s capable hand, the _Songbird’s_ crew has gotten a taste for greater and grander prey—foreign merchant clippers laden with gold, whalers hauling barrels of oil, and the heavy trading brigs of the Coalition and the Empire alike. And Keith cannot deny the heady thrill of outmaneuvering ships two or three times the _Songbird’s_ tonnage, or in seeing their pedigreed captains aghast as all their marines and mounted cannon fail to buckle one lone pirate sloop.

While his men laugh and make plans for how to spend their coin when they next find port, Keith sets a watch shift and begs off to the privacy of his cabin, which is downright palatial compared to the simple hammock he’d slept in for his first six years at sea. His current quarters are the coziest home he’s ever known, even if it’s only been a year.

A plush, intricately woven rug from a Taujeerian brig covers the worst of the blood stains seeped into the floorboards—a remnant of the previous captain, whose goodwill with the crew had suddenly run short. His bed, built into the starboard wall, is soft with stolen silks and fine cottons. Clothesline stretches haphazardly from wall to wall, his socks and breeches still damp where they hang.

Keith ducks under the line, lights lanterns one by one, and then throws open the windows at the back of his cabin, letting the nighttime breeze carry in the clean, comforting smell of salt and sea. He strips down to his shirt and breeches before bending over a basin of rainwater, washing his face and hands clean of black powder and smoke and dried blood—none of it his, this time.

Even with the door to his cabin closed and latched tight, the sound of the crew’s raucous celebration carries. There’s assurance in it, though. Keith keeps one ear trained on the drunken singing and shouts while he props his bare feet up on his battered desk and leafs through the scavenged leather journal he’s repurposed into a sketchbook.

He hums to himself while drawing fanciful things by lantern light, thinking of the stories his father had often told him before bed—when he wasn’t away at sea, that is, leaving Keith to the care of a neighborhood woman who would mind others’ children for a few pence per week. Mermaids and hippocampi with gleaming scales. The slithery tentacles of a kraken around a mizzenmast. Sea nymphs and feathery sirens, wet-haired where they emerge from pools of dark graphite and charcoal.

And when the lantern oil burns low and the celebration above deck has died to a murmur, Keith stows his sketchbook away and drops into his bed, charting tomorrow’s course behind closed eyelids.

* * *

The _Songbird_ might be a small ship, but Keith wields the sloop’s flightiness like a blade, like a rapier.

She cuts clean through the waves as Keith circles his lumbering prey—a brig easily twice their size, the pale blue and white of the Coalition flag on full display—with both hands deftly spinning the _Songbird’s_ wheel. They might only have a dozen cannon aboard, but slipping in close to strike at point-blank range lets Keith’s crew rip right through the brig’s stout hull.

The struggle is violent, but brief. The merchant ship’s captain and crew fight to the last, but they’re not swordsmen or sharpshooters. And once the _Songbird’s_ hold is filled with their spoils, Keith steers clear of the brig as it’s slowly drawn under the waves, the groaning of the wood almost like the mournful song of some leviathan.

It’s a good bounty—enough to see them through another month’s travel to some lawless port where they can fence whatever they can’t put to use.

Keith’s spirits are almost as high as his boisterous crew’s. There’s a freedom unlike any other in being on the open sea, his hand at the helm. The sun is high and the skies are clear. A salt-flecked breeze toys with the locks of hair that have come loose from the tie at his nape. It’s almost idyllic enough to goad Keith into joining in on the sea shanty that the crew have started up while they sweep the decks clean, the sounds of song and sea reminding him of childhood visits to the docks on his father’s heels.

 _Almost._ But as much as the words move him, Keith knows better. Nothing good has ever come from other people hearing his voice raised to sing.

A shadow on the horizon catches his eye, sighted well before any of the men on watch take notice. Keith wanders to the taffrail and pulls the lead eyepiece from its place at his hip, near his dagger.

The ship is still far off, but he can make out a few details. It’s an old frigate, larger than Keith’s sloop but still nowhere near the size of a proper ship-of-the-line. The colors of the Coalition Navy fly at her mast and a trim of reddish-orange runs the length of the ship.

“The _Calypso,”_ Rolo reads out through his own lead eyepiece, and sure enough there is a lovely bust of the famous nymph herself at the bow.

Her aim is the _Songbird,_ unmistakably. And while the _Calypso_ ought to be slow, old and outdated as she is, Keith can’t help but notice that she’s slowly, steadily gaining on them.

“Is that a Coalition man-of-war?” Rolo asks somewhere beside him, thus far the only other crewman aboard to have noticed their distant shadow. “Looks like someone’s taken notice of our work.”

Keith hums.

Without the eyepiece, the _Calypso_ sits small and unassuming in the distance. Keith shields his eyes from the sun as he stares out over the glimmering waves, as curious as he is perturbed. The _Songbird_ has never been tailed before, much less by a full-fledged warship.

“We could take her, Captain,” Rolo murmurs, eyeing him sidelong.

Keith doesn’t doubt it. He’s outmaneuvered ships thrice the _Calypso’s_ size and half of it, and his crew is nothing if not vicious when it comes to blows.

“Not much value to be had in military ships,” he decides, weighing the aging frigate against the wealth of their usual targets. The Navy isn’t known for transporting silver bullion or spices worth pillaging, and it’s not as though the _Songbird_ is running short on food, rum, or anything else. They can’t carry any additional cannon shot, either. “Not enough to make it worth the trouble of a fight.”

Rolo grunts, not quite in full agreement but unwilling to challenge his captain, either. “So… your orders?”

Keith turns back to the helm, the dark, well-worn leather of his fingerless gloves protecting his palms as he grips the wooden spokes of the wheel. “Have the men loose the sails. I’m taking us through that chain of islands we laid anchor in a fortnight ago.”

Rolo stares a moment longer than he should, brow furrowed under the grey-tan scarf wrapped around his head. But if he has doubts, he seems to think better of voicing them. His footfalls grow fainter as he treads down to the quarterdeck, relaying Keith’s orders to the crewmen in the rigging, all of whom have by now sighted the Coalition Navy frigate giving distant chase.

With full sails, Keith steers them toward a long ring of coral islands, bright and beautiful where they rise from the surrounding sea. The crew gathers along the railing as they get close, peering over the sides and into the water; there’s a gathering silence as they glance from the treacherous, hidden reefs lurking below to the man-of-war trailing behind them to Keith, who has eyes only for the sea ahead.

The Kuiper Atoll and its reefs are still largely uncharted, as far as Keith knows, but he needs no map to guide him through its perils. It’s instinct that lets him read the rise and fall of the sea, a gut feeling telling him to steer the ship just so. His father’s love of the ocean, perhaps, passed down into his blood. 

With Keith’s handling, the sloop effortlessly glides through reef-fraught waters where the lumbering Coalition frigate would be hard-pressed to follow. And if the _Calypso_ does take the longer, safer way around, they’ll lose precious hours in the process—and the _Songbird,_ too.

With a comfortable distance and several jagged coral reefs between them, Keith finally turns to look back.

The _Calypso_ is still well beyond the firing range of even long cannons, though the gap between them has narrowed. Already she seems to be slowing, aware of the dangerous waters that lay ahead if she is to maintain her pursuit.

Keith draws his lead eyepiece up once more, scanning the deck. The crew must number in the hundreds: seamen and sailors, marines with muskets and bayonet, royal Coalition officers in crisp blue uniform coats.

It’s the officers that Keith studies the closest, taking measure of the _Calypso’s_ command as they run to and fro. They’re all cut of the same cloth—wellborn nobles sent to fine academies, born and raised with every privilege. Keith hunts through them, upper lip giving a faint curl, until he lands on a figure near the stern, blue-coated and sporting a captain’s bicorne hat.

He’s too far to make out a great deal of detail, but Keith can tell the _Calypso’s_ captain is tall, well-fed, and dark of hair. That imposing silhouette—broad-shouldered under the peak of his bicorne, all white and navy blue—lingers in his mind’s eye long after the _Songbird_ slips around the far side of an isle and loses her pursuer completely.

* * *

Not more than a week passes before Keith lays eyes on the _Calypso_ again, the wind at her back as she chances upon the _Songbird_ in the middle of a raid.

Keith is standing on the deck of a captive merchant ship, his crew scattered as they hunt through personal quarters and carrying holds, only half-finished hauling loot over to their waiting sloop.

He swears, turns on his heel, and calls out, “Take what you can carry and get back to the _Songbird!_ Spread the word!”

The surviving merchant crew, currently bound and lashed to the mainmast and rails, begin to fidget at the sight of the pirates and their captain withdrawing.

Keith pays them little more than a sideways glance. He has chests and crates of loot to hastily move onto his ship, a crew to gather up again, preparations to be made—and only so much time in which to do it with the _Calypso_ racing their way. “Raise the anchor! And keep moving, quickly!”

It’s anxiously slow going, moving what supplies they can across the narrow planks that join the two ships. Gold coins spill over and plunk into the water; a bolt of silk tumbles from Letch’s arms and falls in shortly after, bobbing in the murky waves.

Keith paces the gangway, equally frustrated watching his crew’s sloppy work and the ever-growing shape of the _Calypso_. “I want you ready to drop sail as soon as I give the word,” he orders, knowing minutes might make the difference in making a clean escape. “Ready the cannon, but hold for my word.”

His new boots snap hard against sun-dry wood as he storms up to the quarterdeck, taking the stairs two at a time. At the moment, they’re more or less dead in the water, having left their sails tied and anchor dropped while they ventured back and forth between ships. They’re at a decided disadvantage if Keith can’t get them clear of this damned merchant chipper and gain some speed.

While the last of the loot is carried over, he draws out his lead eyepiece and peers through it.

The _Calypso_ is practically bearing down on them. Marines stand ready at the railing and in the rigging of the sails, their long muskets glinting in the sunlight. Her crew is a-stir, some drumbeat no doubt urging them all to their battle stations. And though Keith cannot see the Coalition captain amid all the flurry, he can picture his figure just as clearly as he’d sighted him in their last encounter.

Keith’s frustration is fever-pitch by the time they draw the boarding planks down and prepare to make way. “Drop those sails and bring me a shortbow,” he calls out, simmering as the dark barrels of the long cannon perched on the _Calypso’s_ bow loom closer, clearer.

Keith dips an arrow into a pail of heated pitch left over from some last-minute repairs to the deck. With the first third of the shaft coated in tar-like ooze, he knocks it and leans toward a few of his crewmen. “One of you, give me a light.”

It’s Janka who fumbles for a lit lantern from below deck, holding it close to the tip of the arrow. It bursts into crackling flame, feeding brightly on the pitch. Its color flares bright even as Keith looses the bow and sends it shooting over the merchant clipper.

The arrow pierces its foresail, leaving a narrow hole that smokes before it conflagrates. The flames spread outward and upward in short order, devouring canvas and eating up the rigging that spans to the other sails, too.

Keith exhales heavily through his nose, a taut coil of anger and anxiety within him slowly unspooling. The blaze ensures the Coalition Navy will be obligated to stop and give aid rather than chase the _Songbird_ further out to sea. It’ll be enough distraction to give them an out, but… it’s a closer thing than Keith would like.

As the sloop quickly picks up speed, the winds at their back carrying the scent of fresh ash and splitting wood, he turns to look back. The _Calypso_ slows and her crew rushes to help the merchants tied up aboard clipper before the ship is consumed in flames, as he’d expected. And there on the stern, not yet sparing a glance for the beleaguered merchants, is the _Calypso’s_ captain.

It’s the closest yet that Keith has seen him, and been seen _by_ him. With a lead piece held up before his eye, the Coalition captain studies him just as intently—until Keith and the _Songbird_ once again slip away.

* * *

They cross paths with the _Calypso_ again in the Balmera Sea, although the _Songbird_ is quickly forgotten when a cutter from the Imperial Galra fleet sails into view, Keith swiftly turning south while the two navy captains trade cannonfire. War still takes precedence over bringing pirates to justice, it seems.

Keith is grateful, if annoyed at the thought of that captain still roaming the same seas as him.

Barely two weeks pass before the _Calypso_ comes upon Keith again. He spies her sails while pursuing a whaling ship worth its weight in oil, the Coalition frigate closing in quick enough that a few of her cannon shots sink into the water not forty feet shy of the _Songbird._

Keith is forced to abandon his hunt for the whaler, taking flight before they can be caught. The breeze and the current remain in his ship’s favor, and his gunners fire a few parting shots toward the _Calypso_ before they outrace the frigate entirely. They all fall shy of their intended target, to Keith’s simmering disappointment.

And he’s tempted—only for a moment—to wrap his hands around the spokes of the wheel and turn the _Songbird_ around. To charge the _Calypso_ head on. To fill the sides of her hull with craterous cannon shots and let his pirate cohort deal with the forty, fifty, sixty marines that must be stationed aboard, muskets at the ready. To find the _Calypso_ ’s smug captain and put a blade through his ribs, staring him down one last time.

But there is more than his life and smarting pride at stake. There is the cost of taking such a heavily armed ship, a toll to be paid even if they are victorious. The _Songbird’s_ crew have followed him this long only because he has not yet led them astray, and taking a ship of the Coalition navy promises no riches—only bloodshed and military rations.

Keith is an expert at evading damn-near anyone on the high seas, but the _Calypso_ … she’s a blight he can’t quite shake. Her captain has it out for him, to be certain. The cursed frigate appears on the horizon again and again, trailing Keith like a prowling lioness chasing away a would-be scavenger.

It thwarts their raids. It keeps them away from port.

The crew begins to grow surly. Keith’s frustrations mount. Whenever he’s able to close his eyes for a few hours of sleep, it’s with the thought of the _Calypso’s_ captain still simmering his blood.

 _That man._ That arrogant nobleman, born with a silver spoon, who dares to pursue the _Songbird_ so doggedly—Keith dreams of cornering him, ruining his wretched ship, and tying a cannonball to that man’s feet before dropping him into the sea. And when he wakes, that low lying anger begins to boil again, even without a sighting of their very determined ghost. 

Days pass without a glimpse of the _Calypso’s_ now-familiar sails and colors. And then a week. And then Keith sees the cursed ship no more, as suddenly as a squall can blow through and leave clear, periwinkle blue skies in its wake.

He still thinks of her captain, though, whether he’s walking the deck on watch at night or standing over the wheel. Strange to think that a man he’s never met, never known—some noble’s son who’d never look twice at him on land—might be doing the same, bitterly remembering the pirate he’d let slip away. If he still lives, anyway.

Four months pass and the reaping is good. Keith continues skirting around the fleets of the Coalition and the Empire alike, nimbly plundering the trade route with nary a glimpse of the _Calypso_ to set his temper roiling. The _Songbird_ is fresh off of another raid—a stubborn merchant vessel Keith had left to burn to the waterline—when a strong, sleek bow suddenly appears around the cliffside of a nearby isle, much too close for comfort.

For a heartbeat, Keith takes it for the _Calypso,_ back to relentlessly hound them once again.

But he blinks, and it’s clear this is a different beast. It’s a Coalition ship-of-the-line, all clean, modern lines and fresh sails. It’s painted smoke-grey and trimmed in midnight black, with a snarling, three-headed wolf carved upon its bow. Keith counts two gun-decks and at least sixty canon.

 _“Kerberos,”_ Rolo murmurs beside him, squinting behind his eyepiece. “She’s new.”

And although this is the first time Keith has laid eyes on the _Kerberos_ , he immediately recognizes the way it angles toward him, gliding smoothly through choppy waves—and the captain standing on its quarterdeck, lead drawn as he stares Keith down, too.

“It’s the _Calypso_ ’s captain,” Keith grates out, having long thought he’d seen the last of him.

This time, there is no choice but a fight, and Keith is spoiling for it. He rouses the whole crew and has them make ready their pistols, their muskets, the cannon and gunpowder bombs. The _Kerberos_ may be heavier and faster than the _Calypso_ , but it’s still a fourth-rate ship; Keith knows all the steps to dance around those.

But even as Keith brings his ship into firing range, he can sense that something is different—not so much with the _Kerberos_ as with the man who commands her.

It’s as if the Coalition captain halfway anticipates Keith’s every move. Usually, the _Songbird_ can dive in and strike first, unleashing a full battery before their prey can even properly aim their cannons; here, the _Kerberos_ is prepared for them at every angle, too deftly managed to be outmaneuvered at any turn.

And when they line up broadside for an exchange of cannonfire, it’s devastating.

At least twenty guns send heavy, iron cannonballs hurtling across the _Songbird’s_ deck, easily outmatching the small sloop’s meager six cannons. Keith barely has time to drop to the floorboards as the plumes of white smoke waft from the gunports along the _Kerberos’_ port side.

The high-pitched whistle of incoming fire gives way to the awful shriek of splintering wood. The mizzenmast cracks clean in two, ropes snapping as it topples down across the deck. The ship groans as direct hits pierce the hull. And above Keith, the wooden wheel of the helm explodes in a burst of cedar shards.

His gloved fingers bury into the messy waves of his own hair as he shields himself, curled up small to avoid the deadly crash of cannonshot around him. Before the battery even ends, the screams of the wounded rise and resonate in the smoke-tinged air.

Ears still ringing, Keith pushes himself up to his feet and draws his flintlock pistol from his hip. There is no hope for the _Songbird_ now—not with one of her sails toppled and the ship’s steerage shot out. But there is no hope in standing down, either. Capture means execution, even if the Coalition bothers going through the motions of a trial beforehand.

And if Keith stands and fights, there’s at least a chance he can take the _Kerberos’_ captain down to the bottom of the sea with him.

While the _Songbird_ flounders, practically dead in the water, the _Kerberos_ draws in close enough to board. Marine sharpshooters up in her rigging rain down musketfire on the pirate ship, picking off Keith’s crew two or three at a time.

Keith can’t reach the musketeers, but he _can_ take aim at the seamen and soldiers swinging over to board his ship. He eyes one of the closer Coalition marines, taking careful aim; with a flare of sparks and smoke, the flintlock fires and a lead shot catches the soldier right in the flank, collapsing him onto the deck.

As Keith sees the barrel of a rifle swivel in his direction, he curses and scrambles behind cover. Wood cracks and splinters from another volley, and the sharp thuds of musket shots follow Keith until he slips below deck, out of line of sight. So much for facing off with the _Kerberos’_ captain—he’d be peppered full of lead before he took two steps in the man’s direction.

There’s no less chaos below deck. Bodies—and pieces of bodies—are strewn across the cannons of the gun deck. Blood and seaspray make the stairs slick. Daylight shines in through holes in the deck above, while the horizon can be glimpsed through the damage to the hull.

Keith can feel eyes on him. Glares, from the rest of the crew who’d slithered down here to escape the barrage of gunfire. They lurk in the shadows with sharpened swords and bayonets, ready to make their final stand; Keith is half expecting to be pierced through the back as he traces the familiar path to the captain’s quarters, his dark gaze lowered.

The ship under him groans, already listing as it takes on water. There is a hole the size of a platter in the wall of his cabin, and his bed is smashed to smithereens. Loose papers blow around the room, tossed by the sea breeze as it drifts in. A number of his finer paintings lie on the floor, the canvases riddled with splintered wood.

It doesn’t matter, now. In minutes or hours, the home he’d made for himself will be swallowed up by the ever-hungry sea—and Keith along with it.

It’s a better fate than being hauled back to shore and killed there instead, interred in some mass grave for criminals, landlocked forever.

He turns back to the door and waits, knuckles blanching as he grips his sword tight. There is a distant clash of steel as they’re boarded, Coalition soldiers fighting their way below deck. It’s an inevitability, at this point. Every pirate aboard will be put to the sword or left to drown or clapped in irons, and all mean death just as certainly.

Guttural screams give way to muted thuds, and then heavy footfalls. Keith swallows, the red scarf knotted around his neck feeling unduly tight, and waits.

He expects the glint of drawn steel and the crisp blue of a Coalition uniform coat. He does _not_ expect to see the figure that darkens the doorway— a man of unusual height and imposing shoulder-width, the gold-braiding and embroidery on his coat marking him as a navy captain.

_“You.”_

“Captain Takashi Shirogane. I’ve been waiting to make your acquaintance for quite some time.”

It’s been nearly a year since this man first appeared on Keith’s horizon, and it seems the last few months have ravaged the proud captain who once stood on the brightly trimmed deck of the _Calypso._

His hair isn’t all dark anymore. A slash of white runs through it, just above his widow’s peak, with a snowy fringe falling across his damp brow; and gone is the military-style ponytail at his nape, his hair shorn so close that it barely covers the tips of his ears. A dark, freshly healed scar crosses the bridge of his nose, cheek-to-cheek. And, most noticeably, the navy captain’s right sleeve hangs limp and empty, pinned up at his side to keep from flapping in the howling sea breeze.

“I thought maybe you’d died,” Keith says, his voice witheringly dry.

“Almost,” Shirogane answers, the ghost of a cordial smile on his lips. “We have a name for you, in the service, but I expect it isn’t the one your parents chose. What am I to call you?”

“Keith.” Not that it matters, truly, so close to the end. Even awash with resentment and fury and mortal fear, Keith wonders why such a pedigreed man cares to know his name.

“Keith. Your ship is lost and your crew is either dead or dying,” Shirogane reminds him. The _Songbird_ gives a lurch under their feet, as if echoing the sentiment. “But you can still live, if you surrender.”

So he can sit in a wood-barred cell and starve. So he can idle and wither in the darkness. So he can be dragged into port and hanged in front of a crowd, his body left upon some wall for days to warn children of the fate that awaits all pirates.

“I’d rather go down swinging,” Keith decides, lunging swiftly at the captain.

His sword meets the steel edge of Shirogane’s cutlass, the thrust aimed at the man’s heart cleanly turned aside. Pity.

Keith draws back, but only for half a heartbeat. He lashes out again, seeking to plunge his blade into flesh and bury it between bone, lancing somewhere through the captain’s ribcage.

But Shirogane weaves out of the way just before the blow lands, as smooth as the ripple of scales underwater. He advances just as calmly, the long, wicked sweeps of his cutlass forcing Keith back one step, and then another, until his shoulders brush the planks of a bookshelf.

He dives under Shirogane’s next strike, tumbling across the ruined floor before springing back to his feet, little wooden splinters sticking in the leather palms of his gloves. He huffs out a sharp breath, as the towering captain immediately turns on his heel, already swinging his blade down in an overhand strike that threatens to cleave into his shoulder.

With a wince, Keith manages to deflect it. The sheer force of the blow jolts the weapon in his hand and reverberates through his bones, down into the marrow.

Shirogane fights well, even missing an arm. Better than Keith expected of a man born into privilege, spared every cruel lesson on killing in desperation and fighting dirty just to live. From the sheer breadth of his frame and how thickly it’s plied with muscle, it’s clear that Shirogane never lacked for good meat, fresh water, or bread that wasn’t cut with sawdust. And for all his recent injuries, he still moves with an infuriatingly languid confidence—the kind Keith recognizes from a childhood of being expected to make way for his so-called betters—and holds himself self-assuredly, even at rest.

And one-handed or not, the Captain’s reach is perilously long. The strength he sinks into every swing would be enough to dig deep through flesh and sever narrow bones. But it’s his focus that unnerves Keith the most—stark and unflinching, as fixed on Keith as the North Star is in the sky. He’d spent months chasing Keith thousands of miles, down the coast and across the seas; it only makes sense that he’d be just as relentless in his pursuit now.

They trade blows once, twice, and then again, still feeling each other out for weaknesses. And perhaps Keith is overeager to end this fight when he whirls and brings up his sword in a backhanded slice, hoping to dig deeply into Shirogane’s defenseless right flank.

It’s as though the navy captain can hear his very intentions, though. He whips around to meet Keith’s strike with one of his own, his blade catching against Keith’s at just the wrong angle.

The force of the blow jars the sword loose from Keith’s hand and sends it rattling across the floorboards, well out of reach. Without missing a breath, Keith draws the dagger from his hip, the lavender-tinged silver flashing with every strike.

Shirogane might be surprisingly nimble for his size, but he has to tire eventually. Keith dances around the small cabin with him, striking at the captain’s wrist, at the crook of his elbow, at the soft belly somewhere under that fine, gold-studded uniform. He’s deftly parried at every turn, Shirogane’s swordwork as bluntly efficient as anything Keith has seen on the lawless stress of renegade port towns.

Usually, fine gentlemen officers aren’t quite so well-prepared to stand toe-to-toe with him. Keith ducks low and aims for one of Shirogane’s upper thighs, hoping to find purchase along that inner seam, to bite deep into the artery that will bleed a man dry just as surely as a slice to the throat.

Shirogane turns the blade of his cutlass downward and blocks the jut of Keith’s dagger like he’s fending off a viper strike. His sides heave with panted breath. “That’s a bit of a low blow, don’t you think?”

“Wasn’t going after your family jewels,” Keith assures, already moving into another whipcord-quick lunge.

His blade falls just shy of carving its way into Shirogane’s abdomen. Keith curses and tosses the dagger into his other hand, before the man can wheel on him again, and swings up hard and fast enough to finally take Shirogane by surprise.

The short blade plunges into the thick muscle of Shirogane’s right shoulder, slowing only as the tip scrapes over bone. The man groans through gritted teeth, his brows knitted tight at the lancing pain and the bloom of deep, dark crimson that wets through his uniform coat. His cutlass falls to the floor, forgotten somewhere alongside Keith’s sword. And for the briefest moment, Keith is certain he’s gained the upper hand.

A sudden, bare-fisted blow to his gut chases all the breath right out of him; Keith barely has time to double over before that same fist hooks him under the jaw, snapping his head back so sharply that he sees stars bloom across the ceiling. He stumbles a step backward, but Shirogane is already closing the gap between them, a cool fury writ across his features as he rips the dagger from his own flesh and casts it aside.

There’s a hiss of steel dragging out of its sheath as Shirogane draws the shortsword at his hip, the blade clenched in hand as he lunges forward, all mass and momentum. He knocks Keith back against the wood-slatted wall and then surges in with his left arm carried defensively before him, sword raised high.

And Keith—trapped against a splintered wall with no weapon and spotty vision—has nowhere to go.

The length of the shortsword rushes toward him, head-on, flashing silver before Keith’s very eyes. They flutter shut the moment before he’s run through, trusting the tempered steel will make short work of him.

A metallic _thunk_ lands directly beside Keith’s ear. No piercing blade runs through his skull, but there _is_ a rather powerful forearm braced across his throat, pinning him tight against the wall.

Out of the corner of one eye, he spies the shortsword that might have killed him. Instead, it’s buried into cedar planking—although close enough to Keith’s face to discourage much movement.

“Last offer,” Shirogane whispers, a ragged edge to his words. The heat of his breath ghosts across Keith’s cheek and up the shell of his ear. His eyes—like grey iron, melted down and ready for casting—glint in the cabin’s dust-filtered light. “ _Surrender._ I know you’re no fool.”

“I’d be a fool to trust the word of some royal lapdog who wants to ferry me to my own execution,” Keith hisses through clenched teeth, lip curled up to show his canines. He squirms against the pressure laid across his throat. “I’d rather die aboard my ship than be executed on shore.”

A beat of silence follows, as heavy and still as the doldrums. The pleading parts of Shirogane’s expression wither into something grim and resigned, the thinned line of his lips settling deeper into place. Keith swallows down every uncertain, unseemly emotion that threatens to well up out of him, determined to lay bare no part of himself.

“Captain,” a voice at the door interrupts—another officer, soot-smudged and blood-stained, his flaxen hair unruly where it’s slipped from the tie of his ribbon. His gaze darts repeatedly to Keith, still bodily pressed into the cabin wall with enough force to keep the toes of his boots an inch off the ground. “We must disembark before she starts to slip under.”

A resonant wail rises from somewhere below, deeper in the _Songbird’s_ hull—seawater filling the bilge, timbers groaning at the pressure they were never meant to bear.

Shirogane sighs. Despite the ship already beginning to buckle underneath them, he seems reluctant to break from Keith just yet. Voice drawn low and weary, he faces Keith once more and says, “I am a firm believer in second chances. I would caution you against rejecting this one.”

Keith’s first instinct is to bite back, to spit on the hollow offer and seal his own fate. His second is to wonder why this Takashi Shirogane is so determined to spare him.

“Unless you truly do believe your place is rotting at the bottom of the sea, with the likes of this crew,” Shirogane adds, a question hanging in those thinly whispered words.

Keith matches Shirogane’s steady stare with an unflinching look of his own. 

No. No. _No._ Keith had never asked to be the keeper of a perpetually hungering beast, bound to keep his crew fed lest they tire of him and mutiny. That had been a means to an end—the freedom he found in charting his own course, and the comfort of a place to make his own.

The resolved set of Keith’s mouth softens, jaw unclenching. He sags back against the planks of the wall, relenting to the steady press of the captain’s forearm. “I surrender.”

Shirogane blinks, a little sigh trailing out between parted lips. If Keith didn’t know better, he’d say the captain was pleasantly surprised. Possibly even relieved.

“Mr. Holt. If you would,” Shirogane says with all the tone of a commanding officer, gesturing at Keith as he draws back just enough to let the captured pirate breathe freely.

Keith bristles as irons are clamped around his wrists, regret seizing him like a bad night tremor. He glances back over his shoulder as he’s summarily led from the cabin, gaze lingering on the bloodied dagger lying amid cedar splinters and strewn paper at Shirogane’s feet. He half considers asking to turn back for the blade, and then thinks better of it—he’d rather it be lost to the sea than taken for some minor nobility’s prize.

Keith is brusquely tugged along by a chain attached to the manacles, Mr. Holt clearly anxious to flee the sinking ship. Along the way topside, Keith steps over the bodies of his former crew—Nolan, Letch, Rolo—many of them still sluggishly bleeding out.

Keith walks the narrow plank that connects the _Songbird_ to the _Kerberos,_ well aware of a hundred sets of eyes boring into him. Stepping onto the Coalition frigate feels like setting foot on alien soil, intruding in a foreign land where he is already well-hated.

The deck is eerily quiet, even as Shirogane returns to his ship and checks in with each of his officers in turn.

Eight royal Coalition soldiers are laid out upon the floorboards, eyes empty as they stare skyward. Eight dead is the price of slaying the _Songbird_ ’s crew and taking him alive; Keith is a little sore that the toll is so low, so uneven. It’s a stark and bitter loss.

The _Kerberos’_ dead will no doubt be mourned and wept over. They will be rendered their last rites and read passages for the dead. They will be stitched up in their hammocks and given a proper burial at sea.

Not so for the _Songbird_ and the bodies she still holds.

With his boots planted firmly upon the _Kerberos’_ deck, Keith stands apart from the gathered crew, bound in iron and chain, and watches as the ship he’d called home for the last seven years succumbs to the waves and the inexorable pull of the deep.

* * *

The brig is far from comfortable, but Keith could do much worse.

His cell is clean. There is a blanket to cover himself with when nighttime’s chill creeps into the berthing deck. He is given three fair, square meals a day, which is far more than he’d expected, and plenty of ale to drink.

It’s a far cry from the comfort of his captain’s cabin, though, or even a simple hammock. He lies on the wooden bench that serves as a bed and stares at the creaking timbers of the ceiling, steadfastly ignoring the radiating ache from his jaw and the slight twinge along his ribs that comes with every breath.

Takashi Shirogane pays him a visit the day after the _Songbird’s_ sinking. His officer’s coat is worn draped over his shoulders; heavy bandaging peeks out from under its collar, bound tight over the wound Keith’s dagger had left him. Two marines hover in the narrow doorway to the brig, keeping a careful eye on their captain.

“Mr. Keith,” Shirogane greets, as he stands at rest before Keith’s cell. His fine boots have been scrubbed clean of blood and wet gunpowder; the breeches and tapered waistcoat he wears are a crisp linen white, untouched by the stains of battle. “Did I knock any teeth loose?”

Keith sits up and works his sore jaw again, prodding at his molars with his tongue. “No.”

“You’re lucky, then,” Shirogane says, giving him a rueful smile. His shoulders drop a quarter inch, relaxing slightly even as the nearby marines stiffen at Keith’s lack of respect. “Are you comfortable?”

Keith keeps his expression stony and his voice dry. “As comfortable as anyone can be, under lock and key.”

“Good. Now,” Shirogane says, stepping closer to the stout, wooden bars of Keith’s cell, “I was hoping to learn a bit more about you.”

“About me?” Keith questions, as puzzled as he is mistrustful. “Like what? I never stashed buried treasure on any island, if that’s what you’re hoping for,” he snorts.

“Nothing of the sort. I am a curious man, is all. Pages and pages of my personal journal are dedicated to you,” he says, the slightest twist of wryness to his faint smile, “and yet I know next to nothing about the infamous captain of the _Songbird._ You made quite the name for yourself in no time at all.”

Keith grunts under his breath, gaze drifting to the greyed wood of his cell’s walls. _Pages and pages._ Good to know that he plagued Shirogane’s thoughts in turn. “Well, that means nothing now. There is no _Songbird,_ and I am no captain.”

Silence trickles into the space that follows his words. Keith likes it that way—curt and final, hopefully inviting no more questions.

“It is rather remarkable for someone so young and informally learned to have commanded a whole crew,” Shirogane says, softer. “And to outfox two warring navies all the while. Who taught you to helm a ship? To read the currents?”

“No one.” Keith is in no mood to talk with his jaw still smarting. He crosses his arms and redoubles his efforts to stare at the wall, pointedly ignoring the quiet, prying look from the _Kerberos’_ captain.

A sigh reaches Keith’s ears, short and soft as it is.

“Very well, Mr. Keith. I will leave you to your rest, then,” Shirogane says, not sounding vexed in the slightest by the brush-off.

But he’s nothing if not persistent, Keith reminds himself.

“Is there a bounty on my head?” Keith calls out as the captain turns to go. “Some vengeful Altean countess or Arusian baron who wants me delivered alive?”

Shirogane halts mid-step, brow slightly furrowed as he looks back over his shoulder. “Not to my knowledge, no.”

Then he takes his leave, the two marines disappearing with him. And aside from a lone guard stationed by the door, Keith is left to himself.

It gives him ample time to think.

Keith has nothing left to his name—no ship, no crew, no coin. Not even his sheafs of drawings nor the dagger left to him by his mother, by way of his father. Even freedom eludes him.

But he’d acquiesced to the offer of surrender with one hope in mind: escape. He’s always been nimble and quick and scrawny enough to slip out of most bindings. Once they reach port, he’ll find a distraction—or make one himself—and take the opportunity to flee. He can lay low. Find a new ship, with a captain and crew he can tolerate. Take to the seas once more.

Or, if he can find a way to pick the lock on the door unseen, perhaps he could slip away once they’re close to shore. He could swim, if they weren’t too far out. He’s always been a strong swimmer. Or maybe he could steal a longboat and row, if the night watch could be silenced…

Keith marks the time by the regular changing of the guard. Nine shifts after his capture, he snaps awake from an uncomfortable nap.

The ship rocks underneath him with the uncomfortable, familiar pitch of sailing through storm-churned waters. But that’s the least of it—somewhere deeper in the berthing deck, the brittle rattle of a snare drum sounds, calling the soldiers to their stations. Shouted orders echo their way back to the brig. Boots pound across the hard oak above him. And as a peal of timber-shaking thunder dies to a purr, Keith can make out another uncomfortably familiar sound.

Cannonfire.

As the _Kerberos_ rocks against the waves, the wooden bench in Keith’s cell begins to slide across the floor, and him along with it. He scrambles to the cell door and holds fast, cheek pressed against the wooden bars for better line of sight.

“Hey, you! Uncage me!” Keith calls out to the guard, who is braced within the doorway and fighting the sway of the ship. “Just until this passes. If she starts taking on water—”

A shrieking crash overhead drowns out anything Keith might’ve said next. A cannonball tearing across the deck, if he had to guess.

If the guard hears him, he doesn’t give any sign. Too busy praying under his breath and trying to stay upright as the sea tosses the ship to and fro with all the care of a spoilt child. Keith hangs his head and breathes deep, letting the worryingly strong scent of cold seawater wash out the rest of his thoughts.

Outside, the storm and the battle both rage on. The ship underneath him shudders as heavy cannonfire connects, and groans like a dying beast as her hull crashes into wind-whipped waves. Thunder shakes the very air around them. And amid the cacophony of crewmen and soldiers shouting to one another, Keith overhears a voice just beyond the brig’s entry.

“—at once—the Red Shrike, immediately,” some frantic soldier says, pitch and volume both rising. “—his orders, not to be—faster, damn you! Here, just give it—” 

A marine suddenly slides into view of Keith’s cell, a small ring of keys clutched in hand. He’s drenched head to toe, utter misery etched in every line around his weary blue eyes. He slings his musket back over his shoulder and works the key into the padlock, scowling murderously at Keith the whole time.

Keith wonders if this marine was one of the ones up in the rigging the day the _Songbird_ sank.

 _The Red Shrike. Is_ **_that_ ** _what they call me?_

He’d heard the name whispered behind him once or twice in port, but Keith had never imagined the moniker was in widespread use.

“Come on, you,” the marine snaps as soon as the door swings open, grabbing Keith by the front of his stain-splattered shirt and wrenching him out. “Captain Shirogane wants you on the quarterdeck. Try anything funny and I’ll shoot you in the gut myself.”

“With wet powder?” Keith asks, eyeing the rainwater dripping from both the musket on his shoulder and the pistol at his hip.

The marine’s lips thin even as his cheeks puff with a little huff of anger. A tinge of furious red lights over his cheeks. “Just _move,”_ he bites out, shoving Keith’s shoulder and pushing him forward.

Keith goes without protest. He’s out of the brig, at least, and free to swim for his life if it comes to that.

The berth deck is chaos. Crewmen push past him carrying wounded on stretchers. The cannoneers fire in volleys that leave Keith’s ears ringing. Rain and seawater pour in from the hatches that lead topside, making the planks below deck treacherously slick.

Keith braces himself as he treads up the narrow stairs and emerges from the hatch, wind ripping at his clothing and icy rain pelting across his skin. The sky above them is like a mirror of the angry sea—dark and roiling, the clouds undulating with currents of air that would see them all dashed to pieces. The waves are white-capped and frothy, twenty-some feet high at their peaks.

And, in the distance, are _two_ Imperial ships-of-the-line. Large ones. First- or second-rate, _easily._

Keith’s stomach drops down to the soles of his soaked feet. A prod at his back sets him moving again, clinging to rigging and railing as he clambers up to the quarterdeck, trying to move with the natural sway of the ship.

“Mr. Keith!” Takashi Shirogane greets, shouting to make himself heard over the storm. His hat is gone. His waistcoat and shirt are soaked through, the fine cotton thoroughly stuck to his skin. Rain pours off of his soaked hair and runs down his brow, over the scar across his nose, and runs rivulets down his lips. “I am afraid I have a favor to ask of you.”

Keith can only stare, dumbfounded, at the gentleman captain who stands before him, his single hand gripped tight around a spoke of the wheel.

“Take the helm, if you would,” Shirogane says, expression utterly serious. “I cannot steer quite as well as I used to, and our acting helmsman is currently on the surgeon’s table.”

“Me?” Keith questions even as he surges forward and grips the wheel, grunting at how much it fights his every move.

“You.” Shirogane trades his grip on the helm for one on Keith’s shoulder. The lurch of the ship sends them skidding, holding tight to the wheel and one another as seawater spills across the deck. His mouth hovers right at Keith’s ear as he says, “There is no one more capable of steering us out of this hell than you. I trust you’d rather not drown?”

“Not today,” Keith says, gritting his teeth as he forces the wheel to move to his liking.

“Good! Now, the Ulippa Atoll is three points off the bow,” Shirogane continues, raising his arm and extending it out in front of Keith to point the way. He is close to Keith—by necessity, Keith knows, given the tumult of the storm—but every slip of their boots over the slick deck shifts him closer, plastered against Keith’s back. “I can make sure we sink the ship on the starboard side. Can you lose the other in the Ulippan reefs?”

Keith nods, certain of it. He’s sailed these waters before. He knows the shoals, knows the reefs, knows where the currents want to take them.

A faint, relieved sigh catches in the shell of Keith’s ear, barely audible under the heavy sheets of rainfall and the surging sea. A chill courses down his spine at the nearness of it.

“I thought as much. Lance Corporal McClain, make sure Mr. Keith doesn’t get washed overboard!”

With that, Captain Shirogane draws back, steadies himself, and carefully makes his way from the quarterdeck to the nearest hatch, disappearing into the gundeck.

McClain—the marine, looking no less miserable as he holds fast to the railing—glares at Keith, like it’s _his_ fault he’s been ordered to stand atop the quarterdeck in the middle of a stormy sea battle.

Keith ignores him.

All confounding circumstances aside, he’s been entrusted with the _Kerberos_ and all the souls upon it. Keith has no intention of letting her sink, whether by cannonfire or toppling waves—he is, after all, one of the unfortunates standing on her deck.

He grunts with the effort it takes to get the wheel turning as he likes, moving the ship’s rudder just so. The _Kerberos_ is considerably bigger and heavier than the _Songbird_ ever was, and there’s precious little time to adjust.

Seawater erupts in a violent spray each time the bow breaks into a cresting wave; icy water spills across the upper deck, sweeping away anything that isn’t lashed down. Wind howls through the ropes of the rigging and whips at the bundled-up sails, itching to tear the canvas to shreds. There are dim, distant flickers of fiery magenta each time the Imperial cruisers fire off another cannon volley, followed by the ominous whistle of incoming iron.

And through it all, Keith manages to carve a path through the chaos, driving the _Kerberos_ against the waves to line her up sidelong with one Imperial cruiser.

It is brutal work. His fingers go numb around the spokes of the helm, palms blistering against the waterlogged leather of his gloves. He stands steadfast against every buffet of wind and shrieking near-miss of cannonfire, clutching tight to the wheel every time the ship tips and lurches.

Under his feet, in the gundeck below, the rows of cannon fire off in neat, well-timed volleys. They’re well-placed, too. Even from here, Keith can hear the crash of iron through wood.

The stern is battered with at least a dozen strikes, blowing out the rudder entirely. One lucky shot cracks clean through the mizzenmast, sending it toppling backward across the cruiser’s quarterdeck. The rigging securing it to the other masts snaps taut, frays, pulls at the timbers until they groan like a dying beast.

Pushed by wind and pulled by gravity, the cruiser’s mizzen tips overboard and into the stewing sea. Its topgallant sail unfurls in the water, quickly becoming a sea-anchor that threatens to capsize the whole vessel. Rudderless and hamstrung by its own mizzenmast, the Imperial cruiser lists and sways, veering into a dangerous lean that sends the hands on deck skidding overboard.

The _Kerberos_ sends off one more merciless volley, piercing through the ship’s exposed hull while she struggles just to stay upright. The Imperial cruiser would’ve sank anyway, in all likelihood, but it seems Captain Shirogane likes to be thorough.

There is still one ship left to contend with, and Keith is determined to make good on his promise to outpace it. And this? This part comes natural to him, even amid the howling of a frigid squall and its whitecaps.

There is still a current underneath all the tumult. Keith leans the _Kerberos_ into it, trusting the waters to take him exactly where he wants to go. Instinct guides his hands as they dance across the spokes of the wheel, careful to keep just out of the cruiser’s effective range.

The narrow gap between them grows, at first by a sliver and then by leaps and bounds.

Keith knows the reef-studded shoals that fringe this atoll—and not just from navigating these waters before, or studying the aged maps he’d inherited when the mantle of captain fell to him. It’s something innate. Something he’d assumed everyone felt, until he saw the bones of long-wrecked ships littering reefs and shorelines, and heard the whispers of awe when he effortlessly avoided the same fate.

Keith’s fingers ache as he weaves the _Kerberos_ through unseen shoals, mindful of her larger, deeper frame. The storm hasn’t abated one bit, and there isn’t one inch of him that isn’t soaked and shivering.

“You… did it,” McClain says, somewhere behind him.

Keith glances back over his shoulder, hunting for the silhouette of the remaining Imperial cruiser; it sits small and distant, shrouded in a grey haze of rainfall where it ceased its pursuit.

Keith sighs and briefly lets his forehead rest against the back of his hand, atop the helm.

“You actually did it,” McClain says, closer this time. He moves to grip the railing in front of Keith, squinting at him through the rain still running down his face. “You—how did—I can’t believe you actually did it,” he murmurs again, dumbfounded.

“Wasn’t in the mood to drown today,” is all Keith replies, wearily taking the _Kerberos_ through the rest of the Ulippa Atoll’s deadly reefs.

Within a quarter hour, the thickness of the storm abates. Fragments of blue sky appear along the fringes of the swirling storm clouds. And, for a little while, Keith is able to enjoy the feeling of standing at the helm of a ship once more, free to move as he pleases.

But he’s unsurprised when two water-logged marines march up the quarterdeck to retrieve him, trailed by an officer who glumly takes the helm, looking nervous even as Keith assures them that they’re clear of all the atoll’s worst.

Under better circumstances, Keith would fight off the hands that hook around his arms, gripping him tight as they lead him down the steps from the quarterdeck. Exhaustion has the better of him, though. Right now, he’d welcome that too-short bench in his cell and the thin woolen blanket it came with.

But they don’t even take him down the hatch to the berth deck, though—much less the cargo deck and its dark, lightless little brig. Instead, the marines make a hard turn and guide Keith through the officer’s quarters, where young lords and ladies gawk as he files past, and into the hall just outside the captain’s quarters.

“You’re to wait here,” one of the marines says as they open the cabin door and shove him in. “Captain’s orders.”

Keith stares at the two of them as the door draws shut, utterly confused. There is a dull, metallic click as a key turns in the lock, followed by the receding of footsteps.

Keith stands in the middle of Captain Shirogane’s quarters, dripping a small pond onto the polished floors, at a loss for what to do.

He shrugs off his red-dyed jacket and wrings out his hair, to start, tired of being sopping wet. Then he empties the water from his boots out the stern windows, marvelling at how calmly the sea now lays. Those storm clouds sit on the horizon now, just a distant blur. And the smell of rain gives way to the familiar salt-tang of a sunny late afternoon, warm and welcome.

Keith paces slowly around the fine room, taking in everything he can. Books and papers litter the floor, sent flying from their shelves during the storm. He picks up maps and charts and returns them to their tables. He sets right several astrolabes and sextants that have toppled over and rolled across the desk, along with a number of other astronomical instruments he doesn’t recognize. And, at last, he finds a few clean, neatly folded rags with which he can dry himself off.

Keith is still squeezing the water from the ends of his hair, shirtless, when a key turns in the lock and the door opens.

“Mr. Keith, I—oh. Pardon my intrusion.”

Keith has never before been shy of stripping or washing—hard to be prudish when he’s spent his whole life in close quarters with four-to six-dozen other men and women—but the slight, softly shocked parting of Shirogane’s lips makes him reconsider. He is, after all, treating the captain’s private quarters like it’s his own.

“I was drenched,” Keith says in his own defense, giving his hair another wring. If he’s going to be flogged, he might as well finish drying off first.

But Shirogane looks far from outraged or offended at Keith making himself comfortable. His expression is mostly weary, likely from the battle, and after the shock fades, a subtle amusement settles in.

“I imagine so.” Shirogane closes the door behind him and moves to join Keith at the small dining table currently set up in the middle of the room. He lays a stack of dry, laundered clothing within Keith’s reach. “I had the acting quartermaster locate some spare clothing that might do for you. I realize the color is probably not to your tastes, but…”

But it’s blessedly dry, and these clothes smell of soap and saltwater rather than sweat and gunpowder.

“I… I’d take anything clean, at this point,” Keith admits, impulsively reaching out to thumb the soft linen in shades of cream, khaki, and sun-faded blue. Then he thinks better of sullying them with his touch, his dirtied, blood-smeared fingers curling as he withdraws.

“You’re welcome to use my washroom to clean up, first,” the captain says, nodding to the narrow room that offshoots from the cabin. “Take your time.”

Keith does, if only to help settle his shifting thoughts.

He has long grown accustomed to mistrust and mistreatment. He can weather it like a bad storm. He can recognize it, close himself to it, thicken his skin against it. But this?

He leans over the water basin and scrubs himself clean, indulging in the scent of the captain’s soap. It’s fragrant—cedar or cypress, maybe, with a touch of something like lemon. It stings a little against the open blisters and slices across Keith’s hands, but in a medicinal sort of way. And it cuts cleanly through a week’s worth of sweat and grime, leaving Keith’s skin soft and supple and pleasantly scented.

While he works the lather through his hair, Keith’s thoughts turn again to the man sitting just a few yards from him, on the other side of the door.

The one who’d convinced him to surrender to save his own life. The one who’d given him the helm to his own ship in the direst of moments. The one who’d praised his skill _and_ banked on it. And then brought him fresh clothes.

They’re a little large on him, and a little loose. Keith doesn’t mind it.

He steps out of the washroom in the new linen trousers and flowy, cotton shirt, feeling refreshed. He leaves his soiled clothing in a bucket by the door, atop some old wash rags.

Captain Shirogane still sits at the table, blinking as he’s startled from his thoughts by Keith’s return. He smiles—reflexively, maybe, because it doesn’t quite reach his eyes this time—and motions for Keith to sit with him once more.

He looks just as worn out as Keith does. And dirtier. A sweep of wet gunpowder has dried along his brow. Blood flecks the white of his collar, like a bit of arterial spray caught him. His clothes are still damp, as is his hair, and it’s difficult for Keith to reconcile this very human man with the one he’d once only known from a distance, standing proud atop the _Calypso_ as he chased the _Songbird_ from merchant to whaler.

“So,” Keith says, groaning as he settles down into the chair, “does the entirety of the Coalition navy know me as the Red Shrike?”

“It is certainly one nickname for you, yes,” Captain Shirogane says, the bleak edges fading from his smile. “I think the _Songbird_ inspired that. You had such a reputation, but we didn’t have a proper name to call you, so…”

“In your journal,” Keith continues, idly picking at a stubborn splinter still lodged in the fleshy pad of his thumb, “do you write of me as the Red Shrike?”

“A few times,” the captain says, leaning back in his chair and sighing. “I had a different name for you, though.”

Keith glances up, curious.

Captain Shirogane’s breath hitches, hesitant despite his smile. “Eurybia’s Star,” he sighs a moment after, looking slightly sheepish. “The sea always seems to work in your favor. I thought it might only make sense, if you had her favor somehow.”

“Eurybia,” Keith repeats, head tilting.

“An ancient goddess. Her realm was mastery of the seas. Something you seem to have in spades,” Captain Shirogane says, his grey-eyed stare roving over Keith’s bemused expression. He studies Keith like he’s a fine painting with endless detail, trying to commit it all to memory.

“Is that why you gave me the helm?” Keith questions, inwardly shying from the way the captain looks at him—intensely, but without spite or condescension or any of the things that Keith knows well. “I doubt many navy captains would allow a lowly, throat-slitting pirate to steer their command.”

“I doubt very many navy captains would’ve survived such a wicked storm, then. Much less with two Imperial ships giving chase.”

That’s true enough.

“You’re not half bad yourself,” Keith says, recalling how many times this very man had followed him like a blight, finding him time and again in the wide expanse of the sea. “You vexed me for months. You were my undoing, Captain Shirogane.”

Shirogane has no reply for that. His stare finally lowers, avoiding Keith’s eyes in light of the reminder—and how strange that is, coming from a man who is no stranger to arresting or executing pirates. And then his head cocks gently to one side. “Are your hands injured?”

Keith looks down at his open palms, raw and red from the saltwater and the rubbing of his gloves. “Blistered. Been a long time since they’ve done that,” he murmurs, more than a little peeved.

Captain Shirogane holds out his hand, two fingers gesturing for Keith’s. “Here, let’s have a look.”

For a moment, Keith just stares at him. This is the same man who put his crew to the sword and threw him in the brig. The same man who, bound by the Coalition’s maritime laws, is ferrying him to an execution in port.

And then, tentatively, he extends one hand, and then the other.

Shirogane peers down at the two palms laid there on the table, the skin worn and split and reddened from gripping splintered railing. His own fingertips brush featherlight against Keith’s, encouraging them to lay flat while he looks over the damage.

And then he rises and rummages through a nearby drawer, fishing out a bottle of rum and a thick pad of cotton bandaging.

“We have a good physician aboard—Dr. Holt, as you’ll doubtlessly meet him—but he’s currently up to his elbows in grievously wounded men. This ought to keep anything from spoiling in the meantime,” Captain Shirogane says as he lightly dabs at Keith’s hands with a rum-soaked cloth.

It stings, but it’s nothing that Keith can’t stand. And it’s a mild, negligible pain compared to the strange kindness of someone else tending his wounds, however small they might be.

“I like your soap,” Keith comments, wincing as Shirogane manages to pull free that one last splinter. “Smells like a forest.”

“I’m glad you enjoy the scent. It’s made with hinoki oil. My mother always sends me enough to last a year,” he says, smiling. “I, ah, notice that you took the liberty of picking up the mess around my quarters. Thank you.”

“I had nothing else to do while I waited. I didn’t read anything of yours, if you’re worried about it. _Can’t_ read, so…” Keith trails off.

“No such worry crossed my mind,” is all Shirogane tells him, still gingerly dabbing at his hands.

He wraps each of Keith’s hands in clean cotton gauze, more careful with him than Keith has ever been with himself. The bindings are nice and snug, too—surprisingly so, for being done one-handed.

“Thanks.” Keith gives his hands a testing little flex as soon as the captain pulls away. He’ll heal in short order, and hopefully without any hint of infection.

“It’s a small repayment, Mr. Keith, considering your service to the _Kerberos_ and her crew. And to myself.”

“Just Keith will do. No one has ever called me mister-anything.”

“If that’s your preference,” Captain Shirogane says, taking the correction in stride. “Keith.”

A silence ensues. Keith wouldn’t call it comfortable, but it isn’t… it isn’t unpleasant, either. As the minutes slowly crawl by, filled only by the bustle of the young officers down the hall and the calls of gulls trailing behind the ship, Keith sighs.

“When will your marines be back to haul me down to the brig?”

Captain Shirogane’s smile is soft. His wind-chapped lips part, drawing in a half-breath before he speaks. “That is entirely up to you, actually. The way I see it, Mr—ah, Keith,” he corrects, “we have two courses of action. There is the one you are familiar with, which entails a trial in the nearest Coalition court.”

“Followed by an afternoon hanging in the village square,” Keith tacks on, nodding. “Yeah, I’m familiar. What’s my other choice?”

Shirogane clears his throat. “You are a very capable fighter and a natural at the helm. If I were to have my say, you would join my crew.”

Keith laughs. His jaw aches worse for it, but he can’t hold back the biting, bitter sound. “I’m a _pirate._ I stabbed you a week ago, or maybe less. It hasn’t even healed yet, has it?”

“Not quite. That’s beside the point, though.” Captain Shirogane leans over to a side drawer and pulls out two squat glasses. They clink as they’re set on the table, right between them, and he wastes no time filling them both with rum.

Keith downs half his rum in one swig. “Is that why you were so damned set on getting me to yield to you? So you could recruit me into the Coalition?”

“Partially. I’d be a fool not to want someone as fierce as you fighting under our banner,” Shirogane says, his dark eyes narrowing. “It is a war, after all. You’ve seen firsthand how harrowing it can be. And I am not above doing the unorthodox if it helps keep my crew alive.”

Keith can’t fault him for that. It’s more honest—more real, more desperate—than he’d expected from someone of such social standing and rank.

“And… I admire the way you sail, Keith. Hated the way you put it to use, but it would be an egregious lie to say that I didn’t feel a spark of excitement watching you do it.”

“Watching me pillage your merchant ships?”

“I did not enjoy fishing drowning sailors and waterlogged corpses out of the flotsam you left behind, no,” Shirogane says, the pitch of his voice dropping to something low and laced with warning. “But the way you’d take flight and outmaneuver every other ship on the water? That was always a sight to see.”

“And here I thought you were chasing me because I was a scourge to you. One you were determined to vanquish.”

A muffled sound of amusement starts and stops behind the sealed lips of Shirogane’s slight smile. “I was determined to confront you before anyone else could, I suppose.”

Before another captain could catch the _Songbird_ and see its every last pirate hanged—Keith included. Keith mulls on that as he drinks, glad for the warmth of the rum in his belly.

“Would the Navy Board even allow it?” he chances to ask, still not quite daring to believe the outlandish optimism of the offer.

“I have the connections to ensure they will.” Spoken with the plain confidence of a man who has bent the system to his favor before.

“Would the crew even accept me? Stomach me?” Keith stares into the dark liquor swirling at the bottom of his glass.

Captain Shirogane exhales through his nose, his sigh chest-deep. “I lost eight good soldiers and sailors taking the _Songbird._ Another twelve today, and Dr. Holt expects two or three more to pass overnight. The crew will learn to stomach you, Keith, and to respect you. Hell, possibly even to _like_ you. Knowing Mr. McClain, tales of your masterful seamanship are probably being spread from bow to stern already.”

Keith snorts into his glass as he polishes off the last of the rum. He drags his finger around the rim, thoughtful. “And you? You’d trust me here on your ship,” Keith says, squinting as he tries to read every little shift of Shirogane’s expression, “wandering loose while you sleep?”

“Hm. How deeply do you begrudge me for the _Songbird?”_ Shirogane asks, more curiosity than apprehension in the little tilt of his head.

It occurs to Keith that the man might be too inquisitive for his own good.

“She was mine,” Keith murmurs, still mournful for all that he’s lost—his home, his dagger, his ability to roam the seas as he pleased. “I came of age on that ship. I made it my own. It was all I had, after my father went and died. That and my mother’s dagger, and now even that’s gone, too.”

“Oh.”

Keith blinks at the note of recognition and realization in that one little utterance. The rum’s slowed him a little. He stirs in his seat as Shirogane retreats to a locked drawer behind his beautifully carved desk, unlatching it with a click.

The captain returns with a bundle of ribbon-wrapped silk in hand, the fabric all grey and white and gold in a pattern like honeycomb. He gently lays it in the middle of the table, well within Keith’s reach.

“It seemed like a unique weapon. Meaningful, probably. I made sure to retrieve it before we departed,” Captain Shirogane says, carefully unfolding the silk scarf to reveal the familiar sight of Keith’s dagger snug in its sheath.

“I thought—I’d hoped to return it to you, at some point. Once I was reasonably assured that it wouldn’t immediately be turned against me,” he says, the words almost playful, but the glimmer of warning in his dark eyes reminds Keith of the sore jaw he’d endured for days. “Or anyone else aboard.”

And Keith only has eyes for his dagger, lying there on a bed of fine silk, well and safely kept. He reaches out, glancing up at Shirogane for any objection, and brushes his bandage-wrapped fingers over its hilt. It slips free of the sheath with the utmost ease, silent as a fog bank. “I thought it was lost forever.”

The weight of it feels just right in his hand. His fingers curl around the woven leather of the dagger’s grip, comforted to hold it again; he rolls his wrist and watches as the mellowing rays of dusk glint off of the blade.

“How deeply do you begrudge me for stabbing you?” Keith wonders.

Captain Shirogane smiles. “I’d be a bit more surly if you’d gone for my good arm,” he says, winning the smallest of laughs from Keith. “As it is, I hold no hard feelings for you. I can’t say with certainty that I’d have acted much differently, given your position.”

Not the admission Keith had expected. There is an evenness in the way the _Kerberos’_ captain speaks to him. _With_ him. It doesn’t feel like a noble-blooded, high-ranking dog of the Coalition condescending to a criminal, the way Keith had expected. Strange, that he would find sympathy _here,_ of all places, and in a man who by all rights could’ve strung him up in the rigging for the fight Keith had given him.

“You’re more forgiving than I would be,” Keith says, eyeing the bottle of fine rum where it sits between them. Even at his poorest, he’d had his reputation—quick to anger, quick to blows, quick to make men twice his size regret crossing him—and at times, it had made all the difference between life and death.

Shirogane hums. “I have the leeway to be forgiving.”

Keith runs his thumb along the worn, salt-softened leather of the sheath in his hand, eyes fixed on his lap. He can still hardly believe it’s here rather than at the bottom of the sea, alongside the broken _Songbird._

“I think you belong on the sea,” Shirogane sighs, his gaze turning from Keith and out the stern windows, where dusk is already blooming along the distant horizon. “Not on a gallows. If you would stay—if you would swear an oath to serve—then I can ensure you remain here.”

“Not much of a choice, is it?” Keith asks. Imprisonment and death await him on land, while Shirogane offers him some degree of freedom at sea.

“No,” Captain Shirogane agrees, and not unkindly. “But I’ll still leave it to you.”

Keith would have to be a fool to turn down such an offer, and he didn’t survive this long without the wits to occasionally swallow his pride. He can keep his head low again, for a time. He can wait until this too-trusting man inevitably drops his guard—probably within the month. He can jump ship as soon as they’re anchored in some port bay, or steal a longboat in the night and glide away unseen.

“Alright, Captain,” Keith decides, giving Shirogane the barest nod. “Just do me the favor of stationing me well apart from that marine, McClain.”

“Not a big enough ship to avoid that, unfortunately, even if I wanted to,” Captain Shirogane says, cracking a smile. He reaches for the rum and pours again, just as generous as before. “I think the crew will grow on you. Eventually.”

Eventually. Keith doesn’t plan on being around long enough for _eventually_ to take root, but he can stomach almost anything for the time being. The warm, smooth burn of Captain Shirogane’s rum doesn’t hurt, either.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aboard the Kerberos, under Shiro's wing, Keith comes into his own.

Keith swears an oath to the Coalition there in Captain Shirogane’s office, the words passing over his lips as hollowly as empty breath. Then he’s led to the nearby officers’ quarters, where a tiny, cramped room just wide enough to hang a hammock sits empty.

“It’s a tight fit,” Shirogane says, “but I think it might be safer to put you here rather than with the crew or the officers. Until tempers settle and old wounds scar over.”

Until it’s less likely that Keith will be strangled in his sleep and dropped overboard in the cover of darkness, the crew rebelling to finish what their captain had left undone.

“Got it.”

It _is_ a tight fit, but Keith has no intention of complaining. He’s spent most of his life sleeping in a hammock, and there is a much-needed security in having three walls and a door around him, close as they are. Having his dagger again helps, too. He keeps the sheathed blade over his chest, hands folded atop it, and listens to the distorted sound of the captain’s voice on the other side of the wall, in the officers’ mess and sleeping quarters.

Telling them about the arrangement concerning the ship’s pirate prisoner, no doubt. Murmurs of conversation rise and fall like sea swells. Keith can only make out a few words here and there—exclamations, impassioned cries of _damned pirate_ and _bloody Shrike_ , and the low, smooth bark of Shirogane setting his officers back into line.

Keith’s heartbeat finally slows to its usual tempo as the voices die down and heavy footsteps recede. Somewhere above deck, the bells ring as the watch changes. The timbers creak and groan around him, as comforting as any lullaby he can imagine; Keith lets the sway of the ship quiet the anxiety that threatens to leave him gasping for breath like a drowned man, and then sleep comes.

Dawn comes, too, and sooner than he’d like.

The first order of business is the burial of the dead. Keith stands on the quarterdeck, set well away from the rest of the crew, with Lieutenant Holt hovering nearby.

Captain Shirogane’s voice carries as he leads the ship in prayer, and then recites the names of the dead, one-by-one. Those bodies bound in stitched-shut hammocks are reverently laid over the railing and into the sea, interred in the deep.

And Keith feels eyes on him all the while, even as Lieutenant Holt lays out their course, the weight of their stares hard and unforgiving.

Word of his new and unorthodox position aboard the _Kerberos_ has certainly spread. The crew whispers behind his back whenever he crosses the deck to better gauge the ship’s course. In the wardroom, the officers and little lordlings eye him all throughout lunch, giving Keith no privacy even as he tucks himself small into a far corner. He catches snippets of his own name, or _Shrike,_ and the rumblings of disbelief that he now walks among them.

It sets Keith on edge and leaves him ill-tempered, comforted only by the dagger hidden at his side in the waistband of his trousers. At times, he wonders if the brig might’ve been a kinder choice—a protection against those among the crew that spite him for lives lost or injuries sustained.

And mixed in with the mistrust and ingrained animosity of the _Kerberos’_ soldiers and crew is _something else._

It takes Keith longer to pin down some of the lingering stares and hurried whispers. They’re less malicious and more… curious, he guesses, and it isn’t until a certain marine comes tromping up the starboard gangway to the helm that Keith puts it all together.

“McClain—”

“Lance Corporal McClain,” the marine corrects, drawing himself up a few inches. He taps the barrel of the long musket slung over his shoulder. “Best shot in the Royal Marines. Show your respect.”

Keith yawns as he touches two fingers to his temple, miming the polite tipping of a hat that officers expect, and then gives the helm a quarter turn to keep the _Kerberos_ sailing with the wind.

It’s unwise, probably, to push his luck any further than he’s already been granted, and Keith has no desire for a lashing. But the thought of bowing and scraping to anyone aboard this ship—even Shirogane—chafes like dried salt over tender skin.

The lance corporal sputters, indignant at the brush-off, and then purses his lips tight. He doesn’t call for Keith to be disciplined, though, whether by flogging or scrubbing decks on his hands and knees.

“You should be thanking me, if anything,” McClain does say, smarmy in tone. “I told the whole crew we would’ve been sunk yesterday if not for you. I gave them _every_ single detail of how we salvaged the fight and saved the _Kerberos_ from certain doom. They all know how you manned your post until you were trembling in your boots—with me bravely battling the elements right beside you, of course. You were the talk of the berthing deck _and_ the wardroom, thanks to me.”

Keith drags out a heavy sigh, squinting under the midday sun. “Wonderful.”

They’re soon joined on the quarterdeck by a large, stout man in civilian’s dress that McClain calls _Hunk_ and a scrawny slip of a midshipman—Pidge—that Keith almost mistakes for a cabin boy. While the three of them carry on together in a tight huddle, Keith sails and tries not to think of whether he’s the topic of conversation.

He also tries not to be visibly ill-at-ease when they approach him at the wheel, as gingerly as they might step around a wolf on a tether.

“So, you’re the Red Shrike,” Pidge says, sizing him up. “From the stories we heard in port, you were supposed to be taller than Captain Shirogane and twice as muscled.”

“And half sea-demon,” the man beside Pidge chimes in. He extends a hand for Keith to shake. “I’m Hunk, by the way. The captain’s steward. I cook for all the officers.”

“I suppose I have you to thank for lunch, then,” Keith says, tentatively returning the gesture out of gratitude for not being poisoned, at least. He holds back a wince as Hunk squeezes his slim, bandaged fingers.

“Oh. Apologies. I didn’t realize your hand was, uh—”

“It’s from him steering us out of that storm,” McClain chips in, eager to be the source of any story or rumor. “For hours he stood here in the wind and rain—and I was right beside him, of course, facing off against the elements and those Imperial swine—until he was trembling where he stood, hands still gripped around the spokes to steady himself. It’s a miracle neither of us caught our death of cold, honestly.”

“Truly miraculous,” Pidge agrees, leaning in to get a better look at his hands. Slim fingers adjust the finely made glasses perched on their nose. “You should probably have Dr. Holt take a look at those soon. It would be a shame to lose a finger or two to rot.”

Keith would agree, but he’s managed for years just fine without so much as a proper surgeon, much less a physician.

Eventually, Keith’s current company tires of his wary, monosyllabic responses to their further prying. McClain wanders off to walk the perimeter of the ship with another marine, while Hunk claps his hands together and says something about starting a salted pork stew for dinner. Pidge lingers the longest, eyeing him with concern, before venturing back below deck.

The rest of Keith’s shift at the helm is borderline pleasant. He may be caged on a Coalition ship with no friends and a great many enemies, but it isn’t a far cry from how he’s lived most of his life.

At least here, high on the quarterdeck, he’s surrounded by open air and sea. The wind toys with those locks of hair that always slip free of his hair ribbon, brushing his jaw and tickling along his ears. And something about the waves and endless tides always calls to him—the same draw his father must’ve felt, always gone at sea while Keith waited back on shore, ever a stranger to the people around him.

* * *

That first week aboard the Kerberos feels like daily walking a razor’s fine edge.

Obedience to the captain’s will keeps the crew in line, at least for the time being. But Keith has served on enough ships to know that even admiration of a beloved captain can wane thin; he knows that the simmering distrust half the crew holds for him will one day come to a head, a reckoning, and how events unfold from there is a messy uncertainty.

Keith tries to keep his head down and focus on the orders Holt relays to him daily, glad for any excuse to step behind the helm again. He only sees Captain Shirogane in passing, during the briefest of inspections on the quarterdeck.

_Have your hands healed, Keith?_

_And how are you faring today?_

_How is she sailing, Keith? Anything I should be worried about?_

Keith answers to the captain’s satisfaction and then Shirogane moves on, a soft curl to the corners of his mouth, to oversee other moving parts of his crew.

When it isn’t his shift to man the helm, Keith whiles away his time in the close confines of his assigned sleeping quarters, staring at his dagger and wondering what move to make next. He emerges only to wolf down his meals in the wardroom, waiting until most of the officers have already finished and left, or to wash up before bed.

And then he tries once more to sleep, well aware that his fragile position aboard the Kerberos remains delicate as ever, the minds of the Coalition crew so surely set against him.

* * *

The first time Keith spies an Imperial man-o-war off in the distance, two points off starboard and just shy of a fog bank, he sounds the alarm before the watch captain on shift has even raised his spyglass.

The crew carries word of the sighting across the deck and below it, their calls filling the misty, golden air of early dawn. A snare drum rattles out, drawing all the marines and soldiers to their posts. Captain Shirogane rises from the depths of the ship with them, hastily dressed—his hat askew, his uniform jacket draped over his shoulders, his waistcoat loose, and his shirt only half-buttoned.

Amid the flurrying activity of all hands making ready for engagement, Shirogane cuts a sharp, direct line straight to the helm. To Keith, whose heart beats quicker at the sight of him and his undone uniform.

There is a stark, stormy intensity to the grey of his eyes as he closes in, bounding up the steps and crossing the quarterdeck in long strides. And for how commanding a figure he cuts, Shirogane is still gentle-spoken as he calls out, “Good eye, Keith. There’s still a good bit of fog-cover we can use. Think you can catch up and take her?”

“Easily,” Keith answers, the _Kerberos’_ rudder changing angle as he gives the wheel a gentle turn; he thinks he can see a spot of shaving whip on the captain’s jaw, missed in his haste to dash up on deck, and finds it almost funny.

“Good,” Shirogane says, smiling well-pleased and slightly crooked. And at _him_ —Keith. “Good. Get us in unseen, if you can, and lay us alongside at pistolshot. I’d prefer not to sink her outright when there might be some useful supplies onboard.”

Shirogane’s hand settles on Keith’s shoulder, those strong, deft fingers squeezing once before falling away. And while Keith’s hackles raise, more reflexive than anything else, the touch isn’t as unpleasant as he first takes it for.

Shirogane shouts as he strides from the quarterdeck, all comfortably-wielded authority. “Sharpshooters up to the top! That means you, too, Lance Corporal McClain. Engage at six bells. I want gunners aiming topside, at their masts and mizzen.”

Keith takes a deep breath and focuses on steering the _Kerberos._ The wind shifts behind them, filling their sails to a full billow, and the shimmering fog across the water provides a mask of cover as they slip closer and closer upon the Imperial ship.

It isn’t until they are within firing range that the Imperial man-o-war sounds the alarm, bells ringing furiously as drums signal the beat to quarters. And by then, it’s too late. The _Kerberos_ glides a little quicker under Keith’s hand, surging in alongside the taller Imperial vessel. The marines hanging high in the rigging snipe into the Imperial crew with lead musketshot, while soldiers on deck fire pistols at close range.

And Captain Shirogane is right there among them, the wind catching the tails of his blue uniform coat, firing until the pistol in his left hand is empty. The air fills with white smoke and the smell of gunpowder, and under the deck, the gunners let loose a volley of cannon fire that rips into the Imperial ship’s upper decks, right through dozens of soldiers who’d bunched along the rails to fire back.

As far as naval battles go, it is short, bloody, and brutal. Keith has to admire that.

“We have them, Shiro!” Lieutenant Holt cries, his cutlass slicing across the chest of one of the few Imperial soldiers trying to swing over and board the _Kerberos._ “They’re on their last legs!”

In minutes, the last of the Imperials are either dead, dying, or kneeling down in surrender. White smoke hangs heavy over both ships, clouding Keith’s view, but he hunts for Captain Shirogane’s profile amid a hundred bodies crowded on the deck and catches small glimpses here and there.

Shirogane’s coat jacket sleeve is torn, and his fine hat missing. His short hair is damp with saltwater and tossed unruly by the ocean winds. He is sweaty and smudged with black powder, and blood stains his left cheek. And he is—well, he is an even more impressive sight than usual.

Later, after the quartermaster comes to relieve Keith of his post at the helm, he finds the mood aboard the _Kerberos_ is decidedly different. Calmer. _Cheerier._ Keith initially chalks it up to the contentment that comes after a resounding victory, when pent-up aggression has been spent and bloodlust satiated, but as he’s singled out by the crew and roped into their festivities, he realizes there’s more to it.

“The man of the hour!” someone yells, and a dozen shouts rise in agreement. “Who would’ve thought a pirate could do us such favors?”

 _Ah._ Keith doesn’t know what to say to that, or how to react to this sudden shift in regard—the same crew that wanted him strung up two weeks ago now hails him as some kind of hero.

“At least you were always a thorn in the side of the Empire, too,” one of the gunners says to Keith, raising a cup in his direction.

To Keith’s surprise, a number of the crew follow suit.

“And now Cap’n Shiro has the Red Shrike sailing for _us,”_ someone deeper in the berth calls out, a handful of whoops and hollers following. “Those Imperial scum will never know what hit ‘em!”

A forecastle shanty starts up, dozens of discordant, off-pitch voices slowly melding into one mostly cohesive melody. It’s jaunty and jovial and though Keith doesn’t know the sea song’s name, he recognizes the tune and most of the words.

The crewmen nearest keep beckoning him to join in, singing louder in encouragement. But Keith keeps his lips pressed firmly shut and shakes off their efforts, content merely to listen.

His singing voice wins him nothing but trouble. Whether among cutthroat pirates or the lawful crews of the Coalition, the last thing Keith wants is unnecessary attention.

He lingers long enough to finish his weak ale and avoid the crew who’ve only just warmed to him. And then, with the quietest of retreats, he slips away from the forecastle and back topside, a raucous chorus of _so merry, so merry, so merry are we, no matter who's laughing at sailors at sea_ growing fainter with every step.

The day has been long and strange. Keith stops in the wardroom to take a small meal of fish and rice porridge, washes up, and is halfway into his hammock when a knock at the door stops him short.

Captain Shirogane stands waiting for him just outside the door, stooped in the tight confines of the hall. “Keith. I apologize for interrupting you this late, but I was hoping we might speak for a moment. In my cabin.”

It’s not as though Keith can say no to the captain of the ship. He quietly slips his shirt back on and steps into his boots, leaving them unlaced for the short walk to the captain’s quarters.

It looks much the same as Keith last saw it, only every book and scrap of paper is neatly ordered and all the furniture placed just so.

“I heard the crew singing your praises earlier.”

“They’re a loud bunch,” Keith complains, though his words are weak and barbless. He’s tired. He has the wits to be grateful for the ship’s opinion of him changing like the winds, too. “It’s been a while since our last actual conversation. I thought you’d lost interest in me, maybe.”

“No,” Shirogane says, the wells of his eyes holding pinprick firelight from the nearby candles. His smile is soft and indulgent and the slightest bit disbelieving. “That wasn’t it at all, ever. However, I didn’t wish to give the crew any further reason to resent you, and favoritism—especially where it’s felt to be undeserved—from an officer will sometimes do that. I knew you would prove yourself in their eyes in no time at all, and any hovering on my part would only have hindered their acceptance of you.”

Keith chews that over and finds some sense in it. But it’s the unspoken reassurance of the captain’s interest that sticks with him like a splinter, tiny and impossible to ignore. “I assume you have a reason for fetching me out of my hammock and asking me here.”

Shirogane could have him whipped for such a presumptive remark, for so little respect, for speaking to him like an equal instead of his social better. But his eyes remain soft in the candlelight and his expression only shows some faint trace of amusement instead.

“It was partly to celebrate as well,” Captain Shirogane says, withdrawing two glasses and that same bottle of fine, rich rum from a desk drawer. “And to thank you. You were instrumental in a quick and efficient victory today. I won’t forget it.”

“Good.” Keith settles back in the chair opposite the captain and sips from his glass, appreciating the smoothness of its burn.

For a few minutes after, neither of them says anything more. Shirogane drinks and fills out his captain’s log. Keith drinks and watches him, wondering if the man always wrote with his left hand or whether he had to teach himself anew after losing an arm. The only sound in the cabin is the steady lapping of waves at the stern of the boat and the ringing of bells as the watch shift changes.

“You let some of the officers call you Shiro,” Keith murmurs, curiosity winning out over his preference for quiet.

“I have known some of the officers since I was a boy at the naval academy,” the captain answers without looking up from his log book.

“Why not Takashi, then?”

Shirogane winces, his quill pen leaving an ink blot where it pauses on the page.

“Because it makes me feel like I’m sitting through one of my father’s lectures again,” he sighs, low and almost grumbling. “My friends and confidants have always called me Shiro. It may not be my given name, but it is the one I am most comfortable hearing.”

Keith hadn’t expected the question to draw up discomfort. He flashes Shirogane a slight, sympathetic smile, moved by some softhearted pang that takes him by surprise. “The lectures were that bad, were they?”

Shirogane laughs, some good humor flooding back. “I have sat through fire and brimstone sermons that were more pleasant. But my family affairs can’t be of much interest to you,” he adds, expression disarmingly warm when he looks to Keith. “And the hour _is_ late. I should get to matters that concern you directly.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you,” Captain Shirogane says, licking his fingers before leafing through a stack of papers on his polished desk. He plucks one free from the pile and pins it under a heavy paperweight, the quill pen in his hand once more.

Rich, dark ink spills across the paper in fine swoops and swirls, Shirogane frequently pausing to let the ink dry. Keith quietly puzzles at the script as it takes shape, utterly lost if the captain means for him to follow his written words.

“I am appointing you watch captain, in addition to your duties at the helm,” Shirogane says, resolute and unquestionable. “You will start with the middle watch, but in time you will be rotated through other watch shifts. Lieutenant Holt will hand down your orders, as he has been thus far.”

“Middle watch starts at midnight,” Keith drawls out, still in disbelief—at the dismal hour of his watch, yes, but at being entrusted with another post aboard the Kerberos, too. 

“So it does. I would make sure you enjoy a good night’s rest in your hammock tonight, then,” Captain Shirogane says, something very nearly sly behind his kind smile. “Your duties as watch captain will begin tomorrow.”

* * *

Weeks pass and Keith discovers he rather enjoys keeping the middle watch.

Most of the ship lies sleeping in the cabins or berth deck below, just two dozen officers and crew manning the ship through the deepest hours of night. It’s peaceful, having the walk of the upper deck with so few people around.

The breeze twists at loose strands of his hair and toys with the collar of his uniform, featherlight over his clavicles and along the hollow of his throat.

The rich fabric of his new navy overcoat offers welcome warmth, although the color doesn’t suit Keith at all. It strikes a good balance between function and form, though, offering enough give whenever Keith has to scale the rigging or throw himself down onto the deck to avoid a volley of musketfire. Whale-bone buttons and touches of golden embroidery mark Keith as an officer of the _Kerberos_ —if only a warrant one, appointed at the captain’s whim, without the proper social status to achieve anything much higher.

It’s a remarkable gesture, though. Keith had never thought he’d be outfitted like an actual officer of the Coalition navy, even if he does perform all the duties of one. Nor did he think he’d really receive a salary, either, with his pay scaled to reflect his level of seaworthy experience.

But Takashi Shirogane has a way of getting what he wants, Keith supposes. Even when it places him at odds with the admiralty and the captains of other fleet vessels, who still eye Keith like he is a feral creature who might turn at any moment.

And perhaps part of the appeal of the middle watch is that Shirogane frequents it, too, by his own leisure.

“Captain,” Keith greets well before Shirogane reaches him where he leans against the taffrail along the bow. He can hear him coming most nights, depending on the wind and the lap of the waves. Other times it’s just a tingling, pinprick sense along Keith’s spine, knowing the other man is close.

“Keith,” is the faint, startled reply. “You… you always do that,” he says, a laugh as soft as seaspray slipping out after. “Are my footfalls so loud?”

“No,” Keith says, turning away from waves that are dark as ink and deeper than imagination can go. He eases back until black-stained wood presses against his spine, hands braced on the railing to either side of him. “You’re pretty light on your feet for a man of your size.”

And he _is_ of a size. Half a foot taller than Keith and twice as wide, heavy with lean muscle. The span of his hand is wider than Keith’s, and his boots considerably larger. In all, Shirogane is… well, he’s certainly hard to ignore. Even the expertly-tailored confines of his off-white waistcoat and trousers seem to struggle to hold all of the man in at times, stretching taut over thighs that might be thicker than Keith’s ribcage.

“Ah. Thank you. I do what I can.” Captain Shirogane is still all personable charm, even at this late hour. He ambles closer, breathing deeply of the cool night air, and takes up a place by the rail, too. “I take it you’ve spied no imminent threats?”

Under the bright, pale light of the moon, the white in Shirogane’s hair is as starkly pronounced as exposed bone. His undress coat hangs open, those ivory buttons and silver epaulets drawing Keith’s eye. The scar across his nose is softer in the nighttime; the grey of his eyes is more like black, like smoke, like depths of water where no sensible man would dare swim.

His smile is warmer, though, somehow, the whole of it fixed on Keith and Keith alone.

“Nothing but clear skies and moonlit waves as far as the eye can see,” Keith answers, pleased to report such pleasant news. For a moment, he luxuriates in the calming roll of the ship across the waves and the smell of salted, deep-sea air. And then, “Have I ever told you how much I like the wolves of her figurehead?”

Keith leans his weight onto one elbow, peering at the three snarling wolf heads carven into the _Kerberos’_ bow. They are black-furred and golden-eyed, their bared fangs painted a bright, clean white. They’re fierce. Intimidating. They suit the ship—and her captain—perfectly well.

“When I was still a child, stuck on shore,” Keith haltingly says, so rarely moved to speak of himself to others, “I loved playing with dogs. If I wasn’t sitting at the harbor, waiting for my father’s ship to return, I was running up and down the alleyways with a pack of strays. Kerberos reminds me of them, I suppose. Dogs are one of the few things I _do_ miss about being on land, after all.”

Shirogane hums, the note soft in its agreement. “I never got to have a dog of my own as a boy, but wolves were a common sight in the forests around the manor. I’d see a white wolf from my window, sometimes, when I was trying to look out at the stars.”

Keith looks up to the endless, expansive sky hanging above them, every inch of it crowded with stars. “Only wooden wolves out here, but at least the view is better on a boat than it is from a window.”

“It is,” the captain agrees, grinning, and he looks so _young_ when he smiles like that. “You know, I was quite the amateur astronomer when I was a boy. I pored through books on the subject and took my own notes. I built my own telescope. I’d stay up all night charting the heavens, absolutely rapt, and then fall asleep during my tutor’s lessons the next day. Especially martial history.”

Keith snorts at the thought—a bold and invaluable captain like Takashi Shirogane snoring through lessons on warfare so he could stare at constellations instead. “Seems like you did well enough for yourself anyway, _Captain.”_

An amused sound slips out of Shirogane, low and pleasing to Keith’s twisting, fluttering gut.

“Well, I didn’t have much choice in the matter once I was at the naval academy,” he says a few moments later, voice sunken low as he looks out at the faint edge of the horizon. “And the war hasn’t made personal, scientific pursuits any easier.”

Keith hums along in vague agreement and tries to think back to a time when he might’ve aspired to something other than what he is. He’d always wanted to be out on the waves, like his father, and he had a knack for sailing, too—and piracy, as it turns out.

But during the long months when Keith was entrusted to whichever neighborhood caretaker agreed to have him, he would often take to a dark slate with a piece of chalk, drawing out dogs and cats and sea monsters from the stories his father told when he came home. He’d liked to study things, to capture their likeness, to carry them with him in the only lasting way he knew. And even as he grew older, he still loved to sketch, filling leatherbound notebooks with pictures instead of meaningless words. And he almost wonders if he could’ve lived a life treading down that path instead, or if the sea would’ve always called him to it.

“I’d rather have sailed the stars,” Shirogane sighs, mostly to himself; the wistfulness in it makes Keith wish such a thing could ever come to pass, if only for his captain’s sake. “But the sea is just as much a mystery, and often as awe-inspiring. And I can surely say there is nowhere better to view the heavens than the open ocean.”

Suspended between leagues of pitch black sea and a chasm of open sky, Keith can hardly pick an argument. He hasn’t scaled mountains or crossed deserts, true, but what could compare to everything the sea has and holds? All its monsters and unfathomable mysteries; the _Kerberos_ and the _Songbird_ and a thousand little worlds across a thousand ships; the man beside him, who surprises Keith in ways hidden reefs never could; his own father’s body and soul, long since dispersed into seafoam and saltspray.

“No,” Keith agrees, contented. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, leaning just a hair closer to Shirogane. “There really isn’t.”

* * *

“There’s a storm headed our way,” Keith says, just loud enough to interrupt whatever pointless, meandering story Lance McClain has been telling for the past quarter-hour. “I doubt we can avoid it.”

“What are you talking about? There isn’t a cloud in the sky!” McClain complains, lifting his hat to let the gentle breeze ruffle his hair. Aside, to Hunk and Pidge, he loudly whispers, “How does he _do_ that? Witchcraft?”

It’s a smell in the air. A change in how the _Kerberos_ handles, the ripples of some distant tumult felt even here, through the waves. It’s a gut sense Keith has learned to trust in, feeling more than he can fittingly put into words.

“Aye, I’m a witch,” Keith deadpans, still staring ahead. “So clear off of the upper deck before I turn you into a flounder and drop you overboard.”

McClain huffs in distaste and throws an arm around Hunk’s shoulders, steering him back toward the gangway.

“Don’t even jest about that,” Pidge warns as she passes by, following on Lance’s heels. “You know how superstitious seamen are.”

Oh, he knows it well.

Keith has seen crews dump gold into the sea if they believed a curse had come along with it; he’s witnessed them scapegoat their captains and sacrifice prisoners if they thought it would end a spate of bad luck. And he would be lying if he said he hadn’t picked up a few superstitions of his own after a life at sea.

Some had come from his father—to never change a ship’s name nor kill an albatross, which tattoos to bear for a safe journey, no bananas under any circumstances—and the rest Keith had picked up over the years. A little bit of bloodshed before leaving port usually made for lucrative raids. He always stepped aboard his ship with his right foot first. And once they set sail, he never looked back to shore.

Keith waves down to the quartermaster, shouting that he’ll need a couple of hours to rest before a brutal storm is upon them. They’re in calm, open waters for now—easy sailing, even for a relative novice. Once the waves turn frothy and white-capped, Keith will take the wheel again and see the _Kerberos_ safely through the storm.

And though the afternoon skies are still a cheery, sunny blue, the crew scattered across the main deck heed his words like they came from an oracle.

Keith ducks his head as he advances down the tight, narrow hall that runs through the officers’ quarters, passing by his own little cigar box room. And he stops short at the door to the captain’s private quarters, remembering just in time that this is not the _Songbird,_ not his ship, not his cabin to stride into as he pleases.

Keith raps against the fine oak door, sharp and a little more forceful than intended. “Captain?”

“Come in,” the muffled voice on the other side answers.

It’s not the first time Keith has interrupted Shiro in the midst of some other activity—weighing his little meteorites, fiddling with expensive glass lenses, shaving in front of a polished silver mirror—but it _is_ the first time he’s seen his captain with a violin in his lap and a bow in his hand.

“Oh. You play?”

Shiro looks down at his right side, at the empty, hanging sleeve missing its usual neat tuck-and-pin. “Well. Not lately.”

“Right.” Keith tilts his head, considering the well-cared for violin. So frequently accustomed to Captain Shirogane deftly managing with one hand what others struggle to do with two, it’s almost surprising to see him struggle with something so mundane.

“I haven’t given up on it, though,” Shiro says as he bends to lay the violin back in its case, as delicate with it as he might be with blown glass. It looks like an old instrument, but well-loved; an heirloom, maybe. “Not yet.”

The corner of Keith’s mouth gives a slight tug. It’s hard not to admire the man’s persistence. “Have you tried a false arm before, Captain?”

“Not yet, no. But I would like to, now that the last sore on this stump has finally healed,” Shiro sighs, what little remains of his upper right arm moving within the loose, billowy sleeve of a white cotton shirt. “I’ve drawn up a number of designs for Dr. Holt to consider. Well, my best efforts at it, anyway.”

Keith moves to stand closer as his captain goes to his desk and retrieves a small stack of papers secured with a messily tied ribbon. Each one features some variant on a possible prosthetic—for polite dining, for wielding a weapon, for delicately pinching quill pens or violin bows. The accompanying drawings leave some detail to be desired.

“I’ve gotten much better at writing with my left hand, but drawing…” Shiro winces. “Well, it was never a great skill of mine.”

“I could try my hand at it sometime, if you’d like,” Keith offers. It’s been months since he’s had the time or the means to nurture his own artistic pursuits, and here is an opportunity to aid his captain, too. “I used to draw quite a lot.”

“Did you?” Shiro’s head cocks to one side, and under the keen interest in his voice lies something deeper, more pensive, and maybe the slightest bit remorseful. “I have an empty notebook you could keep,” he says, pointing to the nearest shelf so that Keith might have it. “It should be suitable for your artistic endeavors. It would also be useful for practicing your letters, should you wish to learn to read and write.”

“From who?” Keith asks, glancing up as he flips through the offered notebook’s blank, thickly pressed pages. “You?”

“If you find my company agreeable, certainly. If not, then I can name at least five officers who would be more than willing to teach you,” Captain Shirogane says.

Keith rests his hip against the sturdiness of his captain’s desk. “I always find your company agreeable.”

Shiro’s smile spreads as slowly as molasses moves. Not for the first time, Keith admires how it softens what might otherwise read as hard, unforgiving features—that solidly squared jaw; those high, sharp cheekbones; thick, dark brows set above eyes that turn nigh unreadable in the right light.

“I am glad to hear the feeling is mutual,” Shiro says, gaze dipping as he takes in the way Keith has made himself so comfortable against his desk, weight all cocked on one leg and leaned against the wood. “We’ll start your first lesson tomorrow, then.”

Something deep in Keith’s chest twitches, flutters at the thought. It’s not as though he lacks for excuses to visit his captain’s quarters, or to exchange words with him above deck, but…

“I’ll be here bright and early, then. And in the meantime, maybe you can tell me what all this says?” Keith questions, turning a page with a crudely sketched prosthetic arm and a violin bow toward Captain Shirogane. Scribbly handwriting fills the margins, a little smudged where the words had been touched before fully dry.

“Oh, those are just notes I thought might be helpful for Dr. Holt. Ideas for a viselike clamp, perhaps, or maybe a fixture of clay and rubber to help grip the bow?” Shiro’s brow furrows.

Keith gestures to the quill and inkwell left sitting on the desk after the captain’s most recent letter. Shiro immediately slides them closer, looking keenly interested as Keith picks up the quill and gets a feel for it.

The metal pen tip scratches lightly across the paper as Keith begins to draw, dark ink spilling over the page in swift, assured strokes. He glances up time and again, picturing an entirely new, manmade arm where Shiro’s is missing—padded leather straps to affix it to his shoulder, polished wood to fit snugly around the stump of his upper arm, and a finer version of the vise one might find in a carpenter’s workshop. It only takes a few minutes to sketch out. He'd have been done faster still if not for taking his sweet time considering how the end result would look on the man before him.

Keith turns the notebook around in his hands, showing the picture off to Shiro while the ink still glistens on the page. “Something like this?”

Shiro’s eyebrows raise considerably. Hesitantly, he reaches out and takes the bottom of the leatherbound book in hand, gently pulling it closer. “Keith, this is… well, leagues better than what I tried to draw, obviously. Amazing! You have a keen imagination and a fine eye for detail. I can hardly believe you drew this just now! Such a man of many talents.”

They’re pleasing, satisfying words. Or perhaps it’s less the words and more the mouth saying them. Maybe just the tone spilling out of those lips, warm and fond and rich with a sincerity Keith still isn’t used to hearing.

His skin heats his collar and along the curves of his spine, sweat prickling at his skin. The cabin feels stuffy all of a sudden, the air pressed a little too close.

“I’ll make you more like it. Better, even,” Keith says, clearing his throat and testing the dryness of the ink before he closes his new notebook. “And then maybe we can look for some suitable materials the next time we’re in port.”

“I would like that,” Shiro says, a broader curve to his smile.

And as Keith mirrors a smile back, soft and unthinking, a question drifts to the surface of his mind and lingers there—one he’s carried with him the whole time he’s been aboard the _Kerberos,_ quietly wondering after the man who existed before Keith met him. 

“How did it happen?” he asks in a murmur, staring into the warm grey of his captain’s eyes for any sign of warning or misgiving. “Losing your arm. And the _Calypso.”_

“Very quickly,” Shiro sighs, leaning back in his chair. His gaze goes slightly unfocused, fixed on a spot a few inches shy of Keith. “Taken by surprise just a day out of a Balmeran port. A canon shot hit the base of the mizzen not a yard away from me. Flung splintered oak everywhere. Caught me across the face, in my thigh, and it shattered the bone in my arm. Pierced an artery, too, I think. Keeping the limb was too much of a risk. Dr. Holt amputated it in under a minute, then bandaged me up in two more. I was back topside not ten minutes after.”

It doesn’t shock Keith—Shiro hardly seems the type to let anything slow or dissuade him—but it’s a sobering tale to imagine.

“Not that it helped, much. We were more or less dead in the water by that point. Were it not for another Coalition frigate spotting us on their way into port and coming to our aid, we’d have been drowned or worse.”

Keith can feel his own frown deepen. “Pirate or Imperial? Did you sink her? Or are they still out there somewhere, patrolling?”

“Still out there,” Shiro sighs, a troubled little crease forming between his brows. “To my knowledge, anyway. There is always the hope that a whirlpool might open up beneath the _Purification_ and take Sendak down to hell with it, though.”

“Sendak,” Keith repeats, committing the name to the deepest reservoirs of his memory. And the _Purification_ —a blatantly Imperial name, fitting for the kind of conquests the Galra make. “Any idea what he looks like?”

“Big, ugly brute,” Shiro says, snorting in the most ungentlemanly manner. “Apparently he lost his right eye while assaulting my _Calypso_ and is none too pleased about it.”

Keith’s chest puffs out as he sucks in a sharp, righteously petty breath. “Good. Glad he didn’t get away unscathed.”

Shiro only laughs, though, his eyes glinting under those uncommonly long eyelashes. ”I am as well.”

As near silence—for they will never be without the sounds of ocean waves and creaking timbers and muffled voices from the wardroom—creeps its way into the cabin, Keith finds himself wishing the air was filled with the music of Shiro playing his violin instead. And it’s strange that he should mourn the lack of something he’s never even heard, but he does

“I look forward to hearing you play one day.”

“That’s very optimistic of you,” Shiro answers, an almost shy little curl to his full lips. And then he sighs. “I look forward to it, too, someday. I always felt better after playing. Slept better, too. Nothing quite soothes away the day’s stress like good music.”

Keith taps his fingers against the thick notebook in his hands, fidgeting for lack of anything better to do. “I wish I could play something for you. Can’t say I ever learned an instrument, though.”

“You could sing, instead,” Shiro suggests, his tone lighter than usual—almost gingerly, if Keith had to put a name to the sound of it. And, as if realizing he is under quiet scrutiny, he clears his throat and adds, “That is, I never hear you singing shanties with the rest of the crew, nor with the young officers after meals.”

Keith stills where he stands, aside from an owlish blink as he lets the unexpected request wash over him. “I never would’ve imagined you’d take notice, Captain.”

Shirogane’s kind demeanor never changes—that easy smile and air of calm, the warmth of color in his cheeks—but a riveting sort of intensity stirs deep in the metalled grey of his eyes. When he speaks, it’s with quiet care. “I try to pay close attention.”

Keith’s first impulse is _no, never._ It’s been at least six or seven years since he last sang out loud to anyone at all, and he’d instantly regretted it even then, as heads swiveled toward his voice and picked him out of the crowd, their rapt fixation utterly terrifying to a scrawny boy of twelve or thirteen. His earlier memories of singing are just as unpleasant—too many eyes falling on him, too many people crowding toward him, too many strange looks from strange men and women.

But… it’s such a small request, and one Keith should easily be able to fulfill. And it’s _Shiro_ who is asking it of him—the man who had spared his life and bargained on his behalf, who’d trusted Keith when he had all the reason in the world to walk him off a short plank.

Shiro deserves his trust, too. And, as Keith licks his salt-dry lips moist, he recognizes in himself that now-familiar hunger to please his captain. To impress him. To earn praise from the only person whose good opinion Keith has ever really cared for.

“Keith,” Shiro says, gentle with his particular way of understanding. “If my personal curiosity goes unsated, I’ll live. You can refuse me. I had just wondered…”

“I mean to do it,” Keith interrupts before Shiro can find his next words.

He thinks of songs he’s heard in lively inns and taverns in port cities, dismissing each one in turn. Until he remembers one sung back home, where his father hailed from, and its lilting, somber tune.

Keith’s first breath shakes, his voice thin as it fills the air of the captain’s cabin. “Gallows master, hold thy hand, hold it back awhile. Callous juror, let me stand, let me bear a smile.”

He holds his gaze on a knotted whorl of wood grain in the flooring, eyes downcast, half afraid to watch Shiro watching him. But every passing measure is a little more certain; the longer he sings, the more natural it feels. And the last time he felt this way was around his father, singing along with him by the hearth of their lonely, one-room shack by the sea.

“For comes my lover distant,” Keith almost sighs, the distantly familiar words moving through him of their own accord, “for comes my savior soon. I stand here most insistent, I will receive my boon.”

And there Keith pauses, hunting through his captain’s eyes and expression for any unsettling sign of change. But whatever his singing voice once attracted in droves is nowhere to be seen in Shiro. There is no leering smile for Keith to recoil from—no glazed, hungry-eyed stare, no inexplicable stupor, no hands reaching out for him.

...Which isn’t to say Shiro is disinterested, either.

His gaze travels Keith’s face with rapt attentiveness, paying him more mind in a single moment than others have in the whole of Keith’s life. He is leaned forward in his chair, pulled to the edge of his seat by the sound of Keith’s voice, but… nothing more drastic than that.

And for once, Keith finds himself wishing it _were_ more. If there is anyone whose attention he wouldn’t mind receiving, it’s his captain.

“Your voice _is_ lovely,” Shiro says, like that was the unspoken question he’d been seeking an answer to.

Keith clears his throat, a bout of nerves crashing over him like a wave out of the blue. “It’s fine, I guess.”

“I could listen to you for hours,” Shiro says, slumping back in his nicely upholstered chair. “Nevermind supper.”

Keith glances out the wide windows just behind Shiro, at the _Kerberos’_ stern. The sun is already dipping along the horizon, washing the skies with golds that fade into blue. There’s still ample time before the storm is due to meet them, and maybe they both deserve a few moments to relax.

Keith moves a neat stack of papers aside and settles himself on the edge of Shiro’s desk, pleased when the only reaction it garners is an indulgent smile. “Well, then. I think we have time for another song or two.”

* * *

Ice grips the rails like long, spindly witches’ fingers and weighs down the ropes in the rigging. It’s wintertime and they’ve been sent north—further north than Keith would’ve ever gone of his own volition—to protect the Coalition’s merchant ships from Imperial privateers.

Keith’s gloves aren’t made for this weather, and neither is he.

The wind and the wet air form ice faster than they can chip it away. Gusts buffet against Keith at every turn about the ship, the arctic air so cold and sharp that it steals his breath away. It causes frost to bloom on his lashes. It makes his blood run cold.

He steps nimbly across the gangway, surrounded by icicles that whistle as they break from the masts and plunge toward the deck. It’s easy to slip across the damp, frozen-over wood and take a tumble. Easier still with his toes numb and his feet iron-heavy, weary from his own constant shivering.

Keith slips below deck at the first opportunity, his teeth chattering together as he weaves his way through the crowded officers’ quarters and rummages through the sturdy new chest in his little room.

He’d bought it with his own salaried pay when they were last in a decent port, needing somewhere to store all the fine items he’s accumulated: sheafs of paper and fine charcoal, simple books to study, finely-milled soaps of his own, cinnamon candy, and spare outfits fitting his current rank.

His undress uniforms sit folded neatly to one side of the chest, most of them in need of some mending. His dress uniform hangs on the wall, pristine and carefully tended. Keith has only worn it on two distinct occasions, thus far—while walking around port towns in Shiro’s company, and while meeting with the officers of other Coalition vessels. 

Keith loves the former, avidly looking forward to any outing with Shiro, while the latter has only ever left him quietly seething.

What’s the point, Keith wonders each time he buttons up his fine uniform and polishes his dress boots, in trying to make himself presentable to gentlemen captains who would never see him as anything but an unruly cutthroat? Why stand at crisp military attention in regulation attire for men who would likely spit on him, if not for Shiro looming protectively at his side? Why endure their snide comments with clenched fists and a locked jaw when he could win their silence forever with a well-placed elbow to the throat?

Because of Shiro.

Always and forever _Shiro,_ who had fought for him from the beginning and never ceased. Not even when it drew the ire of his fellow captains, appalled that he would recruit a pirate as notorious as the Red Shrike into his ranks. Disgusted that Shiro would appoint him an officer. Stricken that he would publicly refer to him by his given name, in a display of highly inappropriate familiarity.

Keith can recall more than one meeting in which the assembled officers’ voices had risen loud enough to hear even while stationed outside, their complaints memorable in how they’d made his blood simmer under his skin.

_‘—a pillaging murderer, not some wayward boy in need of discipline—’_

_‘He deserved a swift drop from a gallows, Takashi, not an appointment to watch captain.’_

_‘--yet you invite him to think of himself as an officer, despite his lengthy criminal record.’_

_‘How do you even sleep at night, aboard your own ship, with the Red Shrike so near?’_

Nothing they said was untrue. None of it. And even now, Keith can scarcely understand why Shiro ever showed him the immeasurable latitude he did. For all his doubts, though, Shiro’s swift rebuttals still ring in Keith’s ears, practically writ on the inside of his skull for how fastidiously he’s committed them to memory.

_‘Keith is more capable than many midshipmen passing for lieutenant, and a trustworthy man besides. His seamanship is superior to that of academy-trained officers and with him at the helm, the Kerberos is now felling first- and second-rate imperial cruisers with twice our guns. If anything, his rank ought to be higher than watch captain, if we are to truly judge on merit—’_

Shouts had drowned out the rest of Shiro’s words, then, before they could reach Keith’s ears on the other side of the wall. But he’d straightened his spine all the same, aglow under the stifling restriction of his dress coat.

And now Keith runs the back of a gloved, shivering hand down the expensive wool of his dress coat, thinking of how hard Shiro had fought to gain him this much: a permanent home aboard the _Kerberos,_ a pardon for his crimes, and a comfortable living as an officer. And within the bounds of his command, Shiro offers him even more.

Few captains would ever have given Keith such free reign over their ship. Fewer still would sacrifice their personal time to give lessons in reading and writing.

With trembling fingers, Keith gathers up an armful of books, papers covered in dutifully-copied text, and a chalk-dusted writing slate.

The walk to Shiro’s cabin is blessedly brief, so familiar and well-trod that Keith could find his way in total darkness. He nudges the brass knob until the door pops open and then shoulders his way in, kicking it closed behind him.

The captain’s cabin is no less freezing than anywhere else on the ship, despite the little brazier of warm coals seated on the floor by Shiro’s desk. The window panes are opaque with swirls of frost, and Shiro himself sits at his desk with a white fur draped over his shoulders like some wild king of yore.

“Time for another lesson already?” Shiro asks, his breath coming out in misty puffs. He hurries to clear away numerous navigational maps and push aside the opened letters laid across his desk, making room. “You’re a quicker study than most of the boys and girls I knew at the academy.”

It takes effort to refrain from visibly preening at Shirogane’s praise. _Considerable_ effort. And perhaps Keith doesn’t do as admire a job of it as he imagines, given how Shiro laughs under his breath as he rises from his chair. 

Shiro meets him halfway and lightens the burden in Keith’s arms, quickly glancing at each book title before stacking them neatly on the nearest shelf. “You finished all of these?”

“It took me ages,” Keith starts, embarrassed at how many times he’d had to consult the dictionary Shiro had gifted him, slowly slogging through dense maritime texts and ancient poetry, “but yes. All of them.”

Shiro’s delight radiates in his smile. Even with his skin paled by the sunless, wintry weather and his nose nipped cherry red from the cold, he’s that kind of handsome that begs the eye to linger.

His hair is brushed back, resting at his nape in a length of silk ribbon, only recently grown long enough to be worn in proper military style. Strands of white streak through his natural inky black, reminding Keith of whitecaps under moonlight—like seafoam glimmering against waters as dark as the night sky, and just as mesmerizing.

“Good! Good. Now let me see what you’ve been writing on your own.”

While Shiro leafs through the many pages upon which Keith had both copied passages and labored to write out his own thoughts, in his own words—about his recent watch shifts and missing warmer climates— Keith strolls around the cabin without any real aim.

Another small brazier warms a basin of water in the washroom, just keeping it from freezing over. Their most recent attempt at a violin-playing prosthetic rests on top of Shiro’s footlocker, beside a case of small tools for refining it. The captain’s bed is neatly made, its usual spread accompanied by a heavy winter quilt and another oversized wolf fur sent from the Shirogane estate.

Keith reaches out and brushes his hand over the pelt, lush fur springing up between his fingers. Were it anyone else’s, Keith might envy the warmth and comfort of a bed like this; with Shiro, he’s just content that the man has enough to keep the chill off.

“Very good, Keith,” Shiro murmurs where he stands beside the heavy desk, papers rustling as he lays them down. “You have shown remarkable improvement in just a few months. I don’t think I have much more left to teach you.”

“Really?” If there’s disappointment in the question, Keith can’t help it. He’s grown so used to these near-daily lessons with Shiro, spending lazy afternoons and late evenings huddled close together; he hadn’t even realized they might end so soon.

“Truly. Which means we can start on the basics of Galran next!” Shiro announces, visibly alight at the prospect of teaching him an unfamiliar language.

Keith relaxes, exhaling a chilly breath he’d unwittingly held in. These little tutoring sessions of theirs are such a reliable means of spending an hour or two with Shiro, even when his time is heavily taxed by the demands of his rank. More often than not, their lessons devolve into long conversations and drinking and late-night duets, if they can agree on the same song.

And there is a different quality to these hours spent together and unguarded, Shiro acting less as a captain and more as a studious man with a love of exploration. Smiles come more naturally to Keith here, within the familiar confines of Shiro’s personal quarters, than anywhere else on land or sea.

He wears a smile at this very moment, faint and fond and maybe a little bit enamored, too. Keith’s hips sway as he stalks his way back to Shiro and his letter-strewn desk, amused at how quickly the man has shifted track.

“And what will you teach me after that?” Keith idly wonders, curious about how long Shiro has been planning to give him a proper introduction to Galran.

Shiro hums as he rifles through his drawers and the nearby bookshelf, picking out heavy tomes titled in a sharp, jagged script. “I could teach you Old Altean, if you’d like. It doesn’t see much use outside of university lecture halls, but it is rather helpful if you’re interested in studying the sciences. And it also looks quite pretty on a page, in my opinion.”

“Not like Galran,” Keith mutters as Shiro drops a stack of dusty books on the desk, their covers engraved in symbols as wicked-looking as the empire that birthed them.

“No,” Shiro quietly agrees, giving a little shiver. “Not like it at all. But understanding your enemy is always advantageous.”

Keith grunts in agreement, his eyes drifting from the numerous and unreadable Galran tomes to the swooping, unfamiliar hand of a nearby letter. It’s written on noticeably fine paper and pressed with a seal in Altean blue—but that isn’t what catches Keith’s eye.

“Hm. This is _my_ name,” Keith muses out loud, running a woolly-gloved finger over the flowing script that reads _Keith Kogane._

“Ah. So it is,” Shiro says, plucking up the letter and its accompanying envelope before Keith can read any further. “I was planning on surprising you with it after supper, with a gift and a bottle of that awful cinnamon rum you like so much.”

“It makes me feel warm,” Keith grumbles, rolling his shoulders under the woolen padding of his heavy winter uniform coat.

“It burns like hellfire going down and all I can smell for _days_ after is cinnamon. But nevermind that.” Shiro carefully unfolds the letter in his hands and presents it to Keith, the seal of the Navy Board prominently placed on the page. “It took long enough, but this is the official recognition of your appointment as watch captain in service aboard the _HMS Kerberos._ Congratulations, Keith.”

Awestruck, Keith reaches out for the letter and reads it himself, eyes passing slow and halting over every word. 

Shiro had issued him the rank almost a year ago, immediately granting him all the duties and benefits of an officer—at least aboard the _Kerberos._ He had spent every month since then stubbornly defending the move to his superiors, arguing a case for Keith’s worthiness, and now the admiralty and the Navy Board have _finally_ conceded.

If Keith weren’t riveted in place by the chill in his limbs, he might swoon at the defiance of it, at Shiro digging in his heels on behalf of someone like himself _._ As it is, he just smiles and reads through the warrant for his promotion once more, warmed with vindication and no small amount of adoration for his captain.

But then a thought strikes him.

“Wait. If the admiralty is only now recognizing me as an officer,” Keith says, brow furrowing as he puzzles over the formal letter in his hands, “where has my salary been coming from all this time?”

It hadn’t occurred to Keith to ask at the time, back when he’d thought Shiro had his superiors’ blessing to bestow him a rank. He’d only learned later that the Navy Board utterly despised and resented the thought of him serving in any official capacity—not terribly surprising—but had thought nothing of the salary he’d been drawing.

Shiro hesitates only for a moment. “I had the purser pay you out of mine.”

“Shiro…”

It should’ve occurred to Keith sooner. Why would the Navy pay him in full while giving Shiro so much grief over his position on the _Kerberos?_ His cheeks flush warm with embarrassment, hating that he blindly took silvers that came out of Shiro’s pocket, and yet…

“What? You deserve fair compensation for your work, just as any other man or woman here does,” Shiro says, giving Keith a stern look that dares him to argue. “And my finances are well enough in order that I could spare it without issue.”

Though he stands stockstill, Keith’s innards squirm with some strange union of discomfort and delight. An unseasonable heat sinks down under his skin, too, oozing between his ribs and dripping down to the pit of his stomach. It flutters in him like something dormant given fresh life, spurring Keith’s heart to a racing canter.

Another kind endeavor to add to the litany of Shiro’s thoughtful deeds. And if it came from anyone else, Keith would mistrust it as a ploy or as pity. But from Shiro…

Only good things come from Shiro.

“You’ve stuck your neck out for me so many times, Shiro. More than I am even aware of at present.” Keith delicately folds up the warrant letter and carefully places it back into its envelope, studying the broken wax seal on the outside. “I don’t know how I’m ever supposed to repay you.”

“You’ve saved my life and my ship on more than one occasion, Keith. There is no debt between us, as far as I am concerned.”

As Shiro gathers up the Galran books and sheafs of paper, Keith grapples with the easy way his captain says such things. Almost a year spent in Shiro’s company and Keith still can’t quite believe his staunchest ally is the very same man he once dreamed of drowning in seafoam gone pink with gore. The fondness Shiro shows for him simply _should not be,_ given that their first meeting involved a pretty good stabbing, and Keith is forever perplexed by how little Shiro asks of him in return.

“I think the bed might keep us a little warmer tonight,” Shiro says, nudging the iron brazier across the floor until it rests beside the bed built into the starboard wall. He drops down onto the middle of the mattress, groaning, and sets the books beside him. “If you don’t mind.”

Keith nearly stammers in his hurry to reply. “Of course I don’t mind.”

He sheds his wool overcoat, all crusted in frozen seaspray and damp with the pervasive cold that lives in every corner of the ship, and settles gingerly near the foot of Shiro’s bed, uncertain in this brave new territory. It’s the first time in ages that he’s felt an actual mattress, all plush and down-stuffed, rather than his hanging hammock. And it _is_ warmer, Keith thinks. Or maybe it’s just his proximity to Shiro and his own heightened nerves at sharing the same bed, even two feet apart.

“Here, why don’t you cover up,” Shiro says, grabbing the corner of his thickly padded, silk-lined quilt and casting it over Keith’s shoulders. He layers the dark wolf fur over top of it, making sure Keith is adequately covered.

Keith grasps the edges of the luxurious quilt and winds it tighter around himself. The little shiver that moves down his spine isn’t from the cold at all. “Thanks, Shiro.”

“No sense in either of us sitting here and freezing.” Shiro smiles in that comforting manner of his, shifting closer as he flips a heavy Galran tome open in his lap.

It looks like a volume on navigating the seas based on the stars, although there are details of constellations that Keith doesn’t recognize. Shiro points out individual characters in the text and sounds them out for Keith, letting him get a feel for the right pronunciation, how they look on a page, how they’re used.

The language sounds just the way Keith had remembered it in pirate port cities and among the handful of Galra who’d made up his old crew—harsh, guttural, with drawn vowels to break up hard consonants.

He edges closer to better see the next passage Shiro points out, the light of the lanterns in the cabin barely enough to stave off the gloomy darkness that hangs over these northern seas. His eyelids start to droop at the low, honeyed sound of Shiro’s voice; the quilt wrapped around Keith’s shoulders holds all his body heat close, warming him all the way through for the first time in two weeks.

And as Shiro leans in to show him some small accent mark that indicates a break Galran speech, Keith’s attention instead catches on the parting movement of those paled lips, suddenly deaf to every sound but the wracking thud of his own heart within his chest.

Shiro is close enough for Keith to see the faint coloring of the veins under his skin and to breathe in the featherlight scent of hinoki oil in his hair. He can feel the way the mattress dips under the weight of Shiro’s broad, muscled body, and the aura of heat that extends a scant inch or two from his skin.

It almost has the air of a dream about it, seeing Shiro like this.

Without thinking, Keith closes that meager three or four inch gap that separates them and leans himself into Shiro’s side, head resting heavily against his shoulder. It puts them flush against each other, thigh pressed to thigh, the well-stuffed mattress cradling them both in the same sunken little dip.

Shiro abruptly drops into silence, mid-sentence, and Keith tenses where he lay, all at once aware of what he’s done.

And then Shiro picks up right where he left off, lifting the book for Keith to better see at this new angle of his.

Relief rushes through Keith, relaxing the tension out of him down to the tips of his fingers and toes. He knows he’s fortunate that Shiro takes no offense at his overfamiliarity, nor his casual flouting of social norms. Any other captain would’ve had him flogged a dozen times over by now.

But Shiro is not like the rest of them. Like no one else at all, undoubtedly. Keith lets himself lean heavier into Shiro and does his best to listen intently—to ignore the guilty yearning that rumbles low in his belly like a leviathan beginning to rouse at the bottom of the sea—and mind the lesson at hand. 

And after several more minutes of patient explanations of Galran grammar, Shiro closes the tome and carefully sets it aside. “Have you fallen asleep on me?”

“No. No, of course not,” Keith says, immediately sitting up, his spine taut, and putting some semblance of appropriate distance back between them.

“Oh, good. I was worried I had bored you so much you nodded off,” Shiro mutters, breath frosting in the air as he puffs out a short laugh.

“You never bore me. It’s just the effect of being warm and comfortable for the first time in ages.” And the soothing nature of Shiro’s voice, he doesn’t say. His heat. The solidity of his shape, which Keith rarely gets to feel outside of their sparring sessions.

“I’m sorry for dragging you somewhere so miserable,” Shiro consoles as he fiddles with the edges of the fur draped around Keith, making sure it’s still closely wrapped around his shoulders. Then he seems to study him, pensive as he absently thumbs at the silvery-black fur.

“Could be worse,” Keith answers, pleased when it makes Shiro smile and tilt his head away.

“Keith,” Shiro says after a few more quiet moments, looking back to him with an air of growing seriousness. He licks across his rough, peeling lips, mulling over his next words before he speaks them. “How would you feel about being named master of this ship next?”

“Master?” Keith echoes, so blindsided that he can’t conjure any other response. A ship’s master is one of the highest naval ranks available to anyone of common blood, much on par with a lieutenant, and Keith… Keith had never even considered it to be within the realm of reality for him.

“Officially, we’ve been lacking one ever since Mr. Xi retired. And you’ve been performing the duties of a sailing master from the first day I put you at the helm. Truthfully, I should have named you master of the ship from the start, Keith. Watch captain was always a poor fit, given all that you do.”

And even attaining him such a low rank was an uphill slog for Shiro. Keith cannot imagine that the Navy Board would be willing to name him _master_ of any ship, no matter how deftly Shiro brings his charms and his gentry connections and his sheer stubbornness to prevail upon them.

“I thought it would serve as a good stepping stone toward something greater,” Shiro continues, and Keith can at least follow his thinking. “If the admiralty can stomach a pirate of your renown becoming an officer at all, then they can accept your rising in the ranks, too. Now that you can read a page and write a letter, it should be easy enough for you to pass the necessary examinations.”

“Shiro.” Keith swallows down the emotion that rises in the back of his throat like bile before it can spill out on his tongue. “Shiro, I think it’s asking for too much. You don’t have to make any more waves on my account. I am happy enough being your watch captain.”

It is more than Keith ever expected when he began his new life on the _Kerberos,_ and very likely more than he deserves. He would be content being just another soul under Shiro’s command, so long as he can stay by his captain’s side.

Shiro looks far from convinced, despite Keith’s sincerity.

“It is what is most fitting and fair for you, Keith,” he says, and the soft note of indignant righteousness in it is familiar by now. “It is the title you rightly deserve. And if something should happen to me, I would rest better knowing your position was secure and your living comfortable. You made a damn good pirate,” he adds, the corner of his mouth tugging up into a brief, uneven smile, “but I don’t want you left with no recourse but to turn back to it.”

_If something should happen to Shiro?_

The thought settles over Keith like a miasma. He has never felt seasickness—not since he was a child, perhaps, and too young to remember—but he imagines the queasy, unsettled feeling in his stomach to be something like it. 

“Nothing will happen to you, Shiro,” he croaks out, the denial coming like a reflex. It can’t. _It can’t._ Keith has no one else and he won’t be left alone and unanchored _again._

Shiro sighs. “Keith.”

A futile, sorrowful anger wells out of the sickness in Keith’s gut, dreading the mere suggestion that Shiro might die before him or leave him by some other means. His jaw tightens into a cage around his tongue, holding back a tide of sharp, aching hurt until he calms enough to speak again. “I won’t allow it.”

Shiro meets Keith’s furious concern with a thin, slightly perplexed smile. His irises seem to go dark as coals, shadowed as he peers at Keith from under the cast of long lashes that sit even more pronounced upon half-lidded eyes. “You won’t _allow_ it?”

“Is that not what I just said?” Keith snaps back, his temper getting the better of him. “I’ll let nothing take you from me—from us. Anywhere you go, willing or no, I’ll follow.”

Keith exhales sharply and realizes he is scarcely an inch from Shiro’s face now, their noses a hair’s breadth from brushing together. Dumbfounded at his own forwardness, he stares into Shiro’s widening eyes—and doesn’t think of drawing back.

No, it doesn’t cross his mind at all. Instead, Keith thinks of how simple it would be to bridge what little distance remains between them and put his chapped, winter-bitten lips on Shiro’s.

The thought is only shocking for a second. Less, maybe. Keith has never been so bold to let a notion this blatant run away with him while in Shiro’s company, but he’s… well, in the dark, swaying loneliness of his own cabin, he’s given himself over to vague dreams of a particular body against his own. Just a dozen times or so, though. Just when the memory of Shiro’s hand on his shoulder lingers with him, or the feel of his silky voice in Keith’s ear can’t be shaken.

They’re too close for Keith to bear out. His hands curl tightly in his lap, refraining from reaching out for Shiro the way he’d like to; if not for the dense, woolen barrier of his gloves, his nails would sink deep enough into his palms to leave reddened half-moons. He should draw back, apologize, excuse himself to his own quarters to wait for this heat to burn out of him.

He doesn’t want to, though.

“Keith.” Shiro murmurs the name, his eyes making the tiniest movements as he traces his way up and down Keith’s very near features. “I know I’ve asked a great deal of you, but I don’t expect you to throw your life away for mine. If something unfortunate were to befall me—”

“No, Shiro. Don’t,” Keith cuts in, his eyes squeezing tightly shut as he shakes his head, unwilling to hear anything else on the matter. In frustration, he draws back into himself, pulling away from Shiro. “I have no patience for talk of your dying or leaving or anything else. I refuse to think of it. Nothing afterward would matter to me. I won’t sail for anyone else but you.”

“Keith,” Shiro sighs, fond and deeply weary. His hand settles firmly on Keith’s shoulder, holding fast, an anchor to keep from drawing any further away. And then, slowly, Shiro’s hand smooths its way to Keith’s collar and up the side of his neck, fingers curling into the hair bunched at his nape. Shiro doesn’t pause until his palm is pressed to Keith’s cheek, cradling his worried head with care. “Don’t say such things.”

The touch leaves Keith shivering from his head down to the toes curled in his worn boots. Unable to help it, he leans into Shiro’s touch, his cheek rubbing into warmed-through deerskin. “It’s the truth, though.”

It’s what Keith does, continually pressing at his captain’s surprisingly lenient nature, hunting for that line in the sand that Shiro has never quite drawn.

And it seems that even this sort of blatant, presumptuous gesture is beyond Shiro’s reproach. The man says nothing to chasten or discourage Keith, or even to tease him for overstepping. Instead, strong fingers thread deeper into Keith’s hair, gently stroking locks loose from the red ribbon Keith had tied hours earlier, his fingers numb with cold.

“I don’t know what I ever did to win such fierce loyalty from you,” Shiro murmurs, a somber note to it. His gloved thumb trails lightly over Keith’s cheekbone. “I chased your _Songbird_ to the bottom of the sea. I dragged you into a war you’d had no part of.”

The mention of the _Songbird_ carries with it a pang of loss and longing, always. But it was never going to be Keith’s forever, as much as he might’ve wanted it, and he’d long since earned the ire of both factions in the war currently simmering across both land and sea. In terms of long-term prospects _and_ fulfillment, Keith is certain he’s traded up.

“I’d be dead if not for you, Shiro. My devotion shouldn’t come as a surprise.”

“You have such a noble streak in you,” Shiro almost scoffs. To Keith’s great disappointment, the captain’s hand slowly slips free of Keith’s mussed, wavy hair and settles again in his own lap, curled into a loose fist. Then, in more pacifying tones, he says, “You know, I do not mention my own mortality to give you worry or grief. It’s simply an eventuality that must be accounted for.”

Keith takes a full moment to consider it.

“No,” he then flatly refuses, unfazed by Shiro’s renewed expression of disbelief. “If you can be stubborn enough to wear down the Navy Board on my behalf, then I can be stubborn enough to keep death and any of its associates from ever knocking at your door. They would have to fight me first, at least.”

There is a faint amazement to Shiro’s smile, which is once again warm enough to make Keith’s heart soften like wax left too long in the sun.

“You know, even from the beginning, you’ve almost always taken my orders without a peep of complaint,” Shiro says, his handsome brows giving a bemused little furrow. “I had very nearly forgotten just how obstinate you can be, when you wish it.”

If there’s any chastisement to be found in Shiro’s words, it’s undercut by the way he once again adjusts the dark fur draped over Keith’s shoulders, making sure he stays warm. 

“I’m only following my captain’s shining example.”

“And I’m just trying to be realistic, Keith. The tides can’t always be in our favor,” Shiro reminds him, as if the brutal scarring he carries around isn’t a glaring, ever-present testament to how quickly fortunes turn at sea.

Keith is willing to challenge that, though. To change it. To keep Shiro safe from whatever turns of fate lie ahead for them.

“They can be, though, with me at the helm.” And then he winks, pleased when it wins him an utterly astonished little lift of Shiro’s eyebrows. His voice comes out low and wintry dry and a little coy, even. “I’m Eurybia’s Star, remember? Her favorite.”

The nearby timbers shudder with a groan as waves push against the ship’s hull, her sudden sway a comfortable excuse to ease close to Shiro again. The brittle ice coating the nearby windows hisses and cracks, and beyond them the winds howl shrill enough to sound like a distant scream.

A blustery pink deepens over Shiro’s cheeks, and suddenly he’s skirting around Keith’s gaze. “You’ll never stop teasing me about that, will you?”

“No. Never. Has any one man ever so admired a lawless pirate?” Keith wonders, strangely satisfied to see Shiro’s blush deepen to a shade like watered down wine. “While everyone else called me that ghastly nickname, you made me sound like a prized diamond. Or a sea nymph. Or St. Elmo’s fire.”

“I still think it suits you better than being a shrike,” Shiro complains, but only softly. “And in my defense, I have yet to see anything that suggests you _aren’t_ some kind of sea nymph or mysterious phenomenon,” he teases back. “Last I checked, most people cannot accurately gauge the depth of a harbor by sight alone or avoid sunken wreckage by gut feeling.”

“See?” Keith placidly agrees, finding Shiro’s exceedingly high opinion of him as endearing as it is overblown. “Blessed by a sea goddess. Which means I am uniquely equipped to protect _you.”_

“As your captain, it is my duty to protect _you,”_ Shiro sternly reminds him, the knuckle of a crooked finger poking lightly into Keith’s wool-padded ribs. “But fine. Do as you will. I certainly could use the favor of one god or another.”

Keith smiles, feeling he’s won something here. Not that Shiro ever makes it hard for him to get what he wants, honestly.

“I, ah, still have that present for you,” Shiro says, abruptly rising from the bed. He crosses the room and returns with a small bottle of cinnamon rum and a velvet pouch in a deep, cool crimson. “But it’s not very seasonable, I’m afraid.”

It’s not the first present Shiro has given him, although those were always spur of the moment things, items that had caught Keith’s fancy in port but weren’t worth his limited coin—lengths of red silk hair ribbon, a watercolor set, compendiums of strange animals from far islands.

This gift carries a different sort of weight behind it, Keith thinks, glancing curiously up at Shiro as the pouch changes hands. Slowly, he undoes the lopsided bow and loosens its gold-thread cords, then carefully draws out its contents.

They’re gloves. Not thick, fur-trimmed ones for winter, unfortunately, but a beautiful pair nonetheless.

“I noticed the ones you normally wear while sailing were wearing through in the palms,” Shiro says. “This pair should last you years.”

The black deerskin is of surpassing quality, just like the pair Shiro wears, soft and supple and durable all at once. The stitching is immaculate. And inside, each glove is lined in buttery smooth silk stained a rich, dark red.

“They’re almost too fine to wear,” Keith says, smiling down at the gift. And as he looks up to Shiro, a lump rises in his throat and unshed tears well along his lower lashes.

“No, they’re just fine enough to suit you,” Shiro insists, his hand settling into its usual place on Keith’s shoulder. “Had I known at the time that we would soon be sent so far north, I would have put in an order for a thicker, warmer pair to match.”

Impatient, Keith slips his hands out of his winter gloves, flexes his bare fingers, and then dons the sleek new ones while Shiro watches. They glide on without a single snag, ending halfway up his forearm; the leather clings to his skin as perfectly as a coat of oil, dark and lustrous.

Keith marvels at how much more comfortably they fit than any of his previous pairs, always a smidge too large for his slender hands and prone to loose stitching from constant wear and heavy use. He could sleep in them, probably, as comfortable as they are. He probably _will,_ honestly, for at least tonight.

“Shiro, these are beyond compare.”

“Then they’re a perfect match for their wearer.”

Keith stills in place, stare skirting up to meet Shiro’s once more. And Shiro just… watches him, absent of expectation, sporting a hopelessly endearing smile.

“So quick with your honeyed words,” Keith grumbles to himself as he pulls his woolen uniform gloves on over top of his new deerskin pair, hoping the chill has blanched his skin enough to dampen the worst of his blushing.

“What was that?” Shiro asks, as if he’d missed it. But the slight tilt of his head is _so_ smug, his little smile so falsely coy—Keith knows him for a liar in an instant.

“You heard me,” he replies, prying the bottle of cinnamon rum from Shiro’s hands. Slowly, though, careful not to let it slip. Slow enough to hook his fingers under Shiro’s, to brush his palm and gently tease his grip around its glassy neck loose.

Damn the cold and these woolen gloves.

“Please fetch us some drinking glasses, Captain,” Keith says, insistent even as Shiro moans about how his whole cabin will reek of cinnamon long after Keith has gone. “I’m not drinking this alone.”

* * *

“Keith.”

Lieutenant Holt approaches with his hat in hand, clutched to his chest, and a worried shine to his eyes.

Keith’s heart drops like a lead anchor. “Has he taken a turn for the worse?”

“No, no,” Matt assures at once, shaking his head so hurriedly that his hair starts to slip from its navy blue ribbon. He licks his dry lips and gives Keith a drawn, concerned look. “He’s the same as this morning, according to my father. No worse, but no better. Why don’t you return to his side, Keith? Sit a spell with him. We’re clear of the atoll now, and I can manage the ship so long as the sea stays calm.”

“Of course,” Keith says, turning the wheel over to Shiro’s lieutenant without a second thought.

He rushes down the steps and below deck, and the rest of the crew know well enough to make way when Keith is headed toward the captain’s cabin.

He doesn’t bother knocking at Shiro’s cabin door, and once inside, he gently pushes it shut and twists the lock.

The soles of Keith’s boots fall softly on the wooden floorboards. The air in the cabin is still. Stuffy. But if they open the windows, Shiro shivers at the slightest draft.

With a heavy puff of breath, Keith settles into the chair beside Shiro’s bed. His captain still sleeps, though it looks fitful at best.

He lays a hand across Shiro’s perspiration-dampened forehead, worrying over the fever that hasn’t yet broken. Keith checks Shiro’s pulse next, the pads of two fingers pressed to the vein in his wrist. And then he gauges the labored rise and fall of Shiro’s chest, trying to figure if it truly is no worse than it was this morning—if the rattling wheeze he breathes with is going to be the death of him.

And Keith practically writhes where he sits, at a loss for how to protect Shiro the way he’d promised. 

“You remember what I told you back when we were freezing our asses off in the northern seas?” Keith asks as he takes Shiro’s clammy hand in between his own, hoping the touch reaches through whatever fever-dream has such a tight grip on him. “No dying on my watch, Shiro. Do you hear me?”

Shiro does nothing but lie there, sunken down into the bed like a fixture of it. His skin is wan and pale, his eyes framed by bruise-dark bags. Fresh sweat is already beading across his brow again. Occasionally, he convulses with a shiver.

The weight of Shiro’s hand in his own ought to be more reassuring, Keith thinks. “I’m right here with you, so keep on fighting.”

He is sorely tempted to lean down and press a kiss to Shiro’s temple, against plastered hair and feverish skin; he nearly does, his lips hovering just shy of brushing Shiro before he withdraws and slumps back in his chair.

He wants Shiro to know he is cared for, and waited for, and expected to return. He wants to have as much time as he can by Shiro’s side, in case—

Just in case.

Keith yawns and whiles away the next two hours with a book from Shiro’s shelves propped open in one hand, often finding himself re-reading the same paragraphs; his other hand holds onto Shiro, hoping the touch comforts even through the fog of sickly slumber. He can feel his own focus slipping, slipping, slipping away, but there’s nothing to be done about it.

How can he rest, knowing Shiro lies in such a state? How can Keith leave his side, even in slumber, when Shiro could need him at any moment?

Later, Keith brews tea from the captain’s personal supply and watches Shiro while he drinks, wishing the familiar scent alone could rouse Shiro, restore him, return him to his usual form. He tinkers with Shiro’s newest prosthetic, hoping to have the fit just perfect for when he wakes up. Keith even takes out Shiro’s violin and plays what little he’s learned, because few things move Shiro quite like music.

And then, as the hour grows late, Keith sings.

Keeping his voice low enough for only Shiro to hear, he starts with sea shanties that he knows the man would recognize from years upon the waves—songs of love and loss and life at sea. And once Keith has exhausted those, he turns to melodies he knows by heart, although the words have long since left him. 

He strokes Shiro’s damp hair while he sings, pouring all his thoughts—his yearning to have Shiro back, to keep him safe, to see his eyes flutter open and his smile return—into every mournful, hopeful, longing note.

Within the hour, Shiro begins to stir under his hand.

Keith can hardly believe it at first, blinking to clear his eyes in case he is only imagining the soft groans issuing from Shiro’s lips and the change in his breathing. Then those grey eyes blearily creak open, unfocused as he squints up at the timbers overhead—and then at Keith, some measure of clarity sharpening his stare. 

“Shiro? Shiro! You’re awake,” he pours out, hand moving of its own accord to cup along Shiro’s jaw, gently turning his head to face him. “I—I’ll go call for Dr. Holt.”

“Keith? I heard you.” Wearily, Shiro shakes his head and raises his hand to cup over Keith’s, giving it a weak squeeze. “Wait. Stay. I need you here.”

Keith dithers there for a moment, torn. Shiro is undoubtedly in a fragile state, and in need of a trained physician’s touch, but… Keith doesn’t want to break from his side, even for a moment.

“Just a few minutes,” Shiro rasps, his throat likely as dry as his pale, cracked lips. The grip on Keith’s hand slackens; Shiro lays his arm back down on the bed, along his side, and sighs. “Then you can fetch him.”

Keith’s tight jaw slowly works itself loose enough to speak. He nods, wavering at first and then resolutely, his hands running down Shiro’s shoulders and over his chest, careless with concern. “How do you feel?”

“Like a half-drowned bilge rat.” The breath Shiro draws rattles around in his chest like the illness has hollowed him out. “What happened? How long have I been in bed?”

“Two days, after you collapsed at supper,” Keith says. “There were a few moments where you nearly seemed lucid, but… they were short-lived.”

Shiro stiffens under Keith’s hands, his whole body rigid where he lays. “I collapsed?”

Keith hums, the tiniest note of judgment trickling into his tone. “That’s right. You barely touched your meal, and then when you stood up, you toppled right over. It’s Dr. Holt’s opinion that for you to be so severely stricken, you must’ve been keeping your symptoms to yourself for quite. Some. Time.”

Keith pats against Shiro’s shoulder with every word—gentle enough to do him no harm, but firm enough to convey his thoughts on the matter. Shiro has the decency to look sheepish about it, at least.

“I’d thought you looked a little wan in the preceding days,” Keith adds, his annoyance turning inward. He should’ve said something _—done_ something—but Shiro is always so adamant of his wellness, so reluctant to give others concern, so stubborn about keeping to his work schedule. “And you felt warmer than usual. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Shiro closes his eyes. “I thought I was just a little under the weather. Nothing worth whining to anyone about. Didn’t want you to worry, Keith—and you _would’ve_ worried.”

“Well, that paid off handsomely,” Keith murmurs. “I was spared a great deal of worry when you suddenly had a fainting spell in the wardroom.”

Not to mention the deathly sleep that followed, Shiro burning up in his bed while he slumbered like death. It was nearly enough to drive Keith mad.

“I am sorry, Keith,” Shiro tells him in halting words. Guiltily, he meets Keith’s gaze before dropping it. “For not being entirely honest with you.”

“You push yourself too hard, Shiro.” Keith means to chastise him, but it comes out more affectionately exasperated than anything else. “Let me go get Dr. Holt now. And I’ll tell Hunk to fix you some broth.”

“No, no, that can wait. Stay with me,” Shiro says, as urgent as anyone can be after such dire, sickly confinement. “Tea would be nice, though.”

Keith sighs, rises, and fixes another small pot of tea right in Shiro’s cabin. When he returns to Shiro’s bedside, he finds the man fiddling with the locket around his neck—one Keith has only glimpsed a handful of times before, when the heat of navigating the equator called for shed jackets and unbuttoned shirts. And even then, he had been more interested in Shiro’s bare chest than in the silver chain and locket he wore.

It’s a very fine piece of jewelry, now that he has a chance to admire it—a wolf’s head detailed in silver, with white, pearly eyes.

“It’s pretty to look at,” Keith comments as he settles down and offers Shiro a cup of tea, nodding to the wolf’s head pinched between the man’s fingers. “Whose portrait is inside?”

Keith has long since concluded that Shiro has neither a wife nor lovers waiting for him back on shore, and he has never spoken much of family, either.

Shiro hums to himself, a thumb working to unlatch the locket. It swings open, revealing the tiny picture within, which he holds up for Keith to better see.

Keith’s brows pinch together, bemused. “You keep a locket with your own portrait inside? Shiro, that’s…”

Shiro’s wheeze sounds as though it was meant to be a laugh. “Not me. My brother.”

“Brother?” Keith takes a second look, but all he can think of is how much Shiro and his brother must resemble each other. Their noses are the same, their lips, their eyes—the only difference Keith can tell is that Shiro’s brother still has full black hair and unmarred skin. “Older or younger?”

“Younger, but only by a few minutes. We were born together.”

“A twin brother, then,” Keith muses, which does explain a great deal. “What’s his name?”

“Kuro,” Shiro answers, smiling above the rim of the teacup pressed to his lips. “My mother’s choice. My father named me.” After a moment, he adds, “After his grandfather, actually. It meant a great deal to my father, that name. He wanted it to go to his eldest son, who would inherit the family estate.”

The way Shiro says it gives Keith pause. “You’re to inherit your family’s estate?”

Shiro laughs again—or tries. It’s less dry this time, but no less wheezing. “No. No, I am _not,_ which is likely why my father regrets naming me what he did.”

 _Inheritances._ Keith can’t relate much to the politicking over them, considering the full sum of his own inheritance was the dagger that once belonged to the mother he’d never met. But neither can he understand why any parent would pass over a son like Shiro and then fault him for it. 

There is a long, stilted pause, and Keith belatedly realizes he might’ve spoken his sentiments out loud. To Shiro.

“Shiro, I didn’t mean to—” 

“Ah, it’s fine,” Shiro says, shifting where he lay, his mouth working while he searches for the right words.

“Well, this is regrettably relevant,” he starts, looking down at himself, weakly laid out under piled quilts and furs. “I was always a disappointingly sickly child, easily given to epileptic fits and weak spells. They often wondered if I would last to the age of ten or fifteen. My brother was hearty and hale, though, and our father… I think he felt the name was wasted on me, when I could barely _live_ —let alone up to expectation.”

“That’s no fault of yours, Shiro,” Keith says, a hand smoothing over the blankets that cover Shiro’s middle. “And here you are, decades later, the strongest man I’ve ever known.”

“Keith—” 

“And your father is a damned fool,” Keith blurts out after, neither capable nor willing to stop himself. With any other man of Shiro’s class, it would be an insult worthy of keelhauling. “He’d better hope he never crosses my path.”

“It’s really not so bad,” Shiro is quick to respond. “The pressure of being his heir would have been far more stifling. As it is, my father’s concern for me extends only so far as to make sure I don’t embarrass the family name—”

“You made captain in the Royal Coalition Navy by twenty-four, Shiro! That’s unheard of,” Keith huffs out, his fingers clawing into Shiro’s blankets and twisting them tight in frustration. “What does that cur have to be embarrassed of? Your success?” 

“—it’s my poor brother you should pity,” Shiro rambles on, running roughshod over Keith’s attempt to give him praise. “Kuro has to deal with _all_ of our father’s expectations, which is a burden I wouldn’t even wish upon Sendak, honestly.”

“I don’t pity you, Shiro.” Keith brushes back a sweaty lock of Shiro’s hair, fingertips brushing along the curve of his ear as he tucks it away. It’s grown out so much since the first time they properly met. “I’m infuriated on your behalf.”

Shiro manages a proper laugh, this time. He says nothing of Keith’s hand stroking along his brow, gently combing back his hair. “Infuriated?”

“Your father sounds like the kind of man I’d have pickpocketed when I was twelve. Maybe tripped him into a pile of horse dung, too.”

“Keith!” But Shiro’s poorly managed smile speaks volumes more than his half-hearted attempt at chastisement. He sighs, looking more at ease; even his breathing seems less labored. “It is complicated. Family, I mean.”

Keith shrugs, unsure of what to say. Family has always been a straightforward—if short-lived—matter to him. “Is that how you ended up in the navy? You got written out of the will? Here I always thought you must have joined up for love of kingdom and country.”

Shiro snorts. “No, no. Although I did become acquainted with Queen Allura and I do value the cause of the Coalition, I am afraid my early motives were not so noble.”

Keith drinks his own tea, letting it mellow his agitated nerves while he listens to Shiro speak.

“I spent a great deal of my childhood confined to a bed, and I lived for what little I could see through my window—the stars, mostly,” Shiro says, and it fits true to everything Keith has already come to know of him. “I memorized constellations and red essays upon our neighboring planets. My mother bought me my first astronomical instruments, and I dreamed of writing books about my own discoveries… but father refused to pay for me to attend a university for something he deemed frivolous. So, I joined the naval academy instead, as it would at least put several thousand leagues of ocean between us.”

Keith keeps his simmering displeasure to himself this time, not wanting to make Shiro dwell any longer on what is unmistakably a bitter piece of his past.

“Well. The navy was the clear winner, there,” Keith offers, winning himself another shying smile from Shiro. “And me, too. I’d be long beyond lost by now if I hadn’t run into you, Shiro. _Captain.”_

Shiro closes his eyes and gives a faint, amused little grunt. “So long since you’ve called me that while it’s just the two of us.”

“I like Shiro better,” Keith says, grateful to be among the number who can refer to him so informally, even if only within the privacy of the _Kerberos._ He refills Shiro’s tea and fluffs his pillow, making sure he’s comfortable.

“I do, too. Especially when it’s you saying it,” Shiro drowsily replies, his eyes fluttering shut as he lets himself sink down into the pumped pillow, much more at ease.

Keith isn’t all sure what to make of that, but it leaves his stomach astir with a feeling as light and airy as bubbling seafoam. He smooths out Shiro’s quilts and wipes the sweat from his brow once more. “I suppose I should go tell everyone you’re awake, hm?”

Shiro sighs, at last willing to let Keith part from him—if only for a moment. “I suppose so.”

* * *

“All I’m saying is that if you start addressing me as your ship’s master on our outings in port, your fellow officers from the royal academy are going to collectively combust,” Keith says, waving his half-drunk wine glass in Shiro’s direction. “Their outcry will be several magnitudes greater than it was when you were just angling for me to make watch captain. Are you truly prepared to go through all that headache again?”

The cabin is dim and rather quiet, the windows opened just a crack to let in the sound of lapping waves. They’ve anchored just offshore of a lonely little island for the night, and the lanterns hanging off the stern glow with the haze of a growing fog.

“Absolutely,” Shiro says, smiling brightly around a mouthful of potato, and Keith isn’t the least bit surprised anymore. When the cause feels right, this man is always spoiling for a fight. “Are you?”

Keith considers his own answer far less vital. The naval officers from the rest of the fleet have never much changed their opinions of or attitudes toward him anyway—it makes no difference whether Keith pisses them off more, honestly. It’s Shiro who will bear the brunt of the Navy Board’s ire, as always, and the snide comments from his noble peers. Keith only has to stand by his side and endure it.

“Well,” Keith says, poking apart his grilled squid as he pretends to ponder it. “You know, I’m happy to do anything that’ll make Captain Weiss so furious that he looks like he just swallowed a toad.”

Shiro shakes his head as he chews, steadfastly staring down at his plate, but he’s still smiling; Keith knows full well that the man sitting across from him shares some of his petty enjoyment in vexing the more highstrung captains. It doesn’t take much to make them steam, either—a mere off-handed remark from Keith about how Shiro had been the only captain skilled and brave enough to challenge the _Songbird’s_ reign of terror at sea is usually enough to leave a wardroom of noblemen fuming.

“But I would be just as happy serving as your ship’s master without the rank or compensation to go with it,” Keith reminds him, knowing full well that Shiro’s mind is already set and that few men are as stubborn as his captain. “I don’t need their acknowledgment, nor their respect.”

 _Just yours_ goes unsaid.

“You do deserve them, though.” Shiro sighs, a trace of his frustration slipping out. “And some things can only be achieved through sheer force of will.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you?”

Shiro’s smile spreads into a grin. Finished with his meal, he settles back in his chair with his nearly empty wine glass.

“I have been known to be rather bullheaded until I get my way,” he concedes, a light dusting of warm color across his cheeks. It’s quite the understatement, in Keith’s experience. “So leave the wrangling of the Navy Board to me. Hopefully this time I can wear them down in less than a year.”

Keith can only smile, giving himself over to the warm and still-unfamiliar feeling of having someone else to rely on. Someone willing to defend him, to wage some battles on his behalf.

“I don’t say it often enough,” Keith murmurs as he pushes his own plate away, every speck of food eaten clean, “but I am unfathomably fortunate to have you.”

In whatever respect he has Shiro, that is. The man has long since grown to be more to Keith than a captain, or a friend, or a confidant. That he once considered Shiro an enemy seems to have been a lifetime ago, or further; by turns, Keith is amused and shamed that he ever wanted anything less than Shiro’s protection, his companionship, his…

That last word hitches, even in his mind.

Keith can no longer count all the times and ways he’s tested Shiro’s patience and affection for him; both seem to be boundless, but he still can’t help but hesitate at the thought of pushing too far.

“Not often enough?” Shiro asks, his eyebrows giving a disbelieving little lift. He rises, corking their half finished wine bottle and tucking it under his right arm. “I seem to recall hearing such words from you every other day, at least.”

“Not that often,” Keith scoffs, but his cheeks warm easily at the thought of all the things he lets slip around Shiro: _I’m lucky to have you in my corner, I couldn’t ask for a better captain, I’m daily grateful to have been found by you._

“I think I might be luckier, of the two of us,” Shiro says, his hand fondly ruffling through Keith’s hair as he passes by on his way to return the wine to its shelf.

Keith grins, his eyes slipping shut at the warmth briefly settled at the crown of his head, a tingle running from his nape all the way down his spine as those calloused fingertips sink through his hair and trail over his scalp.

And then Shiro’s hand recedes, and Keith slowly opens his eyes, staring at the empty seat across the table while Shiro’s footfalls continue somewhere behind him. His skin is warm. His head feels airy light. And as he drags his teeth across his lower lip, Keith tries not to think of how he wishes he could wrap himself around Shiro like a kraken would a ship, never to let go.

With a sigh, Keith pushes himself up from his chair and slips his uniform jacket back on. He sweeps back the hair Shiro’s touch had shaken loose and wanders toward the door, deliberately crossing into Shiro’s path along the way.

“I’m going to go up top and make the rounds before I turn in for the night,” Keith says while he fixes his collar and smoothes out his waistcoat. “Is there anything else you’d like me to do, Captain? Anything I’ve missed?”

Shiro lets out a soft snort. “When do you ever let your duties slip, exactly? The _Kerberos_ is about as much your ship as she is mine, at this point.”

Keith laughs.

“I mean it,” Shiro says, giving Keith’s shoulder a bump as he walks around him, toward his desk. He does a quarter turn to look back. “Just turn in early and rest well. You’ve earned it.”

“And what will you be doing?” Keith asks, his lips curling faintly at the warm, lingering effects of even a slight brush with the other man.

“I have a small mountain of reports to write and expenses to log,” Shiro answers, his smile turning grim in the blink of an eye.

Keith nods, more sympathetic to the plight of paperwork now that his duties as the ship’s master entail record-keeping of his own. “I can help, then, once I’m done checking things up top.”

“What did I just say?” Shiro asks, his voice taking a sterner, playfully sharp edge. “You’ve earned a good night’s sleep, especially after the close call you sailed us through earlier today. Go drink your awful cinnamon rum and have sweet dreams, Keith.”

Shiro nods for him to go on, but Keith stands firm, more than capable of quietly matching him for mulishness.

At Keith’s unblinking, unfazed stare, Shiro relents in short order. _“Fine._ If you find me passed out at this desk tomorrow morning, you may finish whatever reports I haven’t already drooled on. But tonight, I want you laid up in your hammock without a care. Captain’s orders.”

Keith grumbles under his breath. It’s so typical of Shiro, who commits himself to his work even to his own detriment, to use _captain’s orders_ to keep Keith from doing anything similar.

“Fine,” Keith bites out, because he can’t very well disobey Shiro outright. “But once this lamp is out of oil,” he continues in low tones, leaning forward and tapping the glass of the nearest oil lamp sitting on Shiro’s desk, _“you_ ought to be in bed as well. _Master’s_ orders.”

Shiro’s mouth drops open slightly, perhaps never having thought Keith might use his newly bestowed title against him.

As Keith turns and takes his leave, he hears Shiro belatedly call out behind him, “You know I still outrank you, don't you? Keith? I could work straight through the night if I were so inclined!”

Keith smiles at the sheer willfulness of it as he weaves his way down the narrow confines of the officers’ quarters.

Once he’s made a turn about the deck, he’ll stop by Shiro’s cabin again anyway. Maybe he can coax the man into drinking with him rather than slogging through that pile of papers. Maybe he can convince Shiro to put it off until tomorrow, when they can sit down and tackle it together. Maybe they can sing and play music instead, and Keith can fall asleep on the floor of Shiro’s cabin again, content just to lie close enough to hear his captain’s slow, steady breathing through the night.

As soon as Keith emerges onto the deck, the damp night air swirling around him, all those warm thoughts melt away as easily as the fine sugar Shiro sometimes takes in his tea.

The fog that blankets this bay is so chokingly thick that Keith can see neither the _Kerberos’_ bow nor her stern. All three of the masts disappear into the moonlit haze that hangs over them. And the air is close—so close around Keith that it makes him uneasy, as if cool, ominous breath is bearing down on the back of his neck.

It’s far from the first time they’ve anchored in a bay like this, or been enveloped in heavy fog. Keith rarely pays such things much mind, but this… 

There is something he doesn’t like about it.

Keith is halfway up the stairs to the quarterdeck when he stops, listening. Below the idle chatter of the watch stationed along the deck—most notably Lance McClain, who grumbles loudly when he notices Keith has arrived—Keith thinks he can catch something just on the edge of his hearing. 

“Oh? Well, well, well, if it isn’t our Red Shrike. I thought you were too good to show up for first watch these days,” McClain grouses as soon as Keith is in earshot. “Shouldn’t you still be down in the captain’s cabin, making some godawful racket with that violin?”

“Shut your mouth, McClain, for one goddamned minute,” Keith hisses, his patience sapped dry in an instant. “Can’t you hear that?”

“Hear _what?”_

Something moving in the water, just beyond sight. Lumbering through the fog like a behemoth prowling for a kill. It makes Keith’s skin goose pimple, every hair along his nape raised like the hackles of a feral dog.

Keith’s heart beats against his ribcage like the sharp staccato of a snare drum calling the crew to combat, but the air above the Kerberos’ deck remains still and quiet—aside from a few marines near the bow, laughing amongst themselves.

“Go. Quiet. Them,” Keith tells Lance, doing barely more than mouthing the words. _“Now.”_

And for once, looking stricken, Lance doesn’t argue. He waves his arms as he crosses the deck toward his fellow marines, urging them to fall silent.

Long, tension-fraught minutes pass. Keith’s stern glare keeps the watch captain from ringing the bells that signal the hour. With a finger held to his lips, he signals for Pidge to go below deck and quietly call the crew and her captain to arms. To four other members of the crew, he nods to the heavy chain of the anchor currently tethering the ship in place. The sleeping officers must be alerted, too, and Shiro as well.

 _Especially_ Shiro, who is still sitting in his cabin with his nose buried in a stack of papers, unaware of whatever trap they’ve already wandered into.

Keith walks the starboard gangway of the Kerberos’ upper deck, warily listening to the waves. There is _something_ here—he is certain of it, from the marrow in his bones down to the tightening pit of his stomach—but the fog is too thick to get any more than a whisper of where it is. He knows he isn’t mistaken, though the midshipmen standing near the porthole wear waxing expressions of doubt. He hasn’t roused the whole ship for no reason. His gut hasn’t led him astray.

In twos and threes, the crew silently appears above deck, rifles and pistols in hand. But there is no sign of Shiro yet—just Matt Holt, who rises up the stairs with a lantern in hand and steps toward Keith with a pinched, alarmed expression, his mouth already opened to speak. 

The burst of cannonfire is as shocking as a clap of thunder on a clear, sudden day. Violet-tinged explosions flare within the nighttime fog, the light and sound much too close—point-blank, almost, and there is barely time to draw a single breath before forge-hot iron is tearing into the Kerberos’ stern and ripping into her sails.

The deck erupts into noise all at once, soldiers and sailors alike shouting as they take up their posts and finish pulling up the anchor.

Keith scrambles for the helm, taking hold as the quartermaster drops down to the deck aside.

Now that Keith knows where their enemy lies, he can maneuver them through the fog. He can turn sharp, line the gunners up for a volley before the Imperial ship has a chance to disappear again—

But the wheel doesn’t turn for him. Even tugging on one of its spokes with both hands isn’t enough to make the helm budge, and Keith’s heart sinks as he realizes their rudder is likely blown to smithereens. Few are the times he’s been trapped like this, caught with no means of escape.

While Lieutenant Holt rallies the soldiers, Keith is of a singular mind and purpose. He wasn’t raised for this life, nor trained for it. Not even a year and a half under Shiro’s command can render Keith willing to stand and die for the Coalition in a nameless bay on some empty island, holding his post past the point of futility.

He shoulders through the marines and sailors, instead clawing his way down into the officers’ quarters, hoping to meet Shiro halfway. If he’s to die, it won’t be for some queen he’s never met three thousand miles from here—it will be for Shiro, and _with_ Shiro, fighting right by his side.

But with every footstep deeper into the cramped hall of the officers’ quarters, Keith’s heart drops lower into his boots. Shiro would’ve come running before now. At the first barrage of canon, he’d have been topside, half-dressed even, with his cutlass in hand.

By the time Keith reaches his own narrow quarters, dread drips from him like summer’s sweat. He barrels past the officers’ pantry and throws open the door to the captain’s cabin, as he has hundreds of times now, and— 

It’s gone. Much of it, anyway. In taking out the rudder, a number of cannon shots found their way into the cabin, too, blowing out glass and carving out wide sections of wood. The flooring itself sits at an angle, its supports half-collapsed, the floorboards sloping out toward the dark sea.

Shiro’s desk is entirely missing, as are whole shelves of books and artifacts: his little meteorites and astrolabes; the polished lenses for one day assembling a proper telescope; the portraits and landscapes Keith had gifted him over the months, all framed by the ship’s carpenter. As is Shiro, whom Keith cannot find no matter how frantically he rakes through toppled shelving and shattered wood.

Streaks of fresh, crimson blood curve across the floorboards, toward the jaggedly torn hole at the _Kerberos’_ stern. Smears of it trail to the edge of the wood and then disappear, as if a bleeding Shiro had simply slid from the caved-in cabin and into the churning waters below.

Keith fears that he’ll look out into the waves and find Shiro there, ghostly pale against the black sea; a hundred drowned bodies he’s seen, but he can’t bear the thought of Shiro being in their number. And though Keith has never had cause to believe in the gods other pirates and sailors prayed to, he remembers Shiro’s blushing talk of Eurybia and hopes that if he _does_ hold some kind of sway over anything at all, it can work in Shiro’s favor, too.

Another battery of cannon fire sounds around him, near and far, the two ships answering each other in quick succession. Keith pays it no mind, trembling as he edges across the sloping floor of the cabin. The wrecked floorboards groan under his boots as he leans over and searches the waves, desperate for any shred of Shiro.

Keith doesn’t see Shiro lying still in the water, eyes open and mouth parted under a film of cold water. He doesn’t see him clinging to flotsam, either, nor swimming around to the side of the ship.

Like a curtain parting, the fog ebbs just enough to give Keith a glimpse of the man he’s so desperate to see—limp as he’s heaved into a Galran longboat, fished from the sea by Imperial seamen and rowed back toward their vessel.

Keith’s heart couldn’t sink faster if it had been transmuted to lead and dropped overboard, doomed to plummet until it found rest at the bottom of the sea.

Without another consideration, he leaps from the wreckage of the cabin and dives into the ink-black waters, any thought of the _Kerberos’_ fate abandoned. It’s _Shiro_ who needs him. Shiro, lost in the chaos of a one-sided battle. Shiro, caught in the hands of an enemy who utterly loathes him.

The nighttime sea shocks the warmth from Keith’s body. He shivers as he swims, frantically fighting against incoming waves and currents that threaten to tug him out into deeper waters. The fog closes in around him time and again, but Keith can tell the longboat isn’t far. It’s not out of reach. Shiro isn’t yet lost.

He keeps the thought at the forefront of his mind, like a litany. _Shiro needs him. He’s not lost yet. Shiro needs him!_

Keith’s lungs burn like they’ve been doused in cheap rum, the sting doubling with every new breath. He chokes on mouthfuls of bitter saltwater and gasps through smoke-filled air, unwilling to turn back even as the exchange of heavy cannonfire drops off and the _Kerberos’_ agonized groans reverberate through the sea. He swims until he can barely hold his chin above the water, his flailing limbs numb to everything but the sheer will that keeps them moving.

Ahead of him, the fog swirls and breaks. A sharp bow pierces through it first, bearing a figurehead of hellish purple and gold flames; painted along its side is a line of blocky Galran script that reads _Purification_.

Panic grips Keith like an ironclad hand, crushing in its intensity.

A passing wave suddenly pushes him under, saltwater filling his nose and mouth, and by the time Keith claws his way back to the surface, the _Purification_ is gliding on in eerie silence, having already felled her enemy and taken her prize.

Keith tries to give chase, but the same sea that has so often worked in his favor pushes him under, smothers him, beats him back toward the listing _Kerberos_ and the island’s deserted shore. His last breath is spent crying out Shiro’s name, calling him back, pleading to whatever god takes mercy on sailors lost at sea—and then Keith is swept under the waves once more, his exhausted body cradled limply in the current, and all he knows is darkness.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Keith sings is a portion of Dragon Age's "She of the Highwaymen Repents," with a little tweaking.
> 
> As always, you can find me here [on twitter!](https://twitter.com/saltisochi)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath, Keith wakes and searches for Shiro.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is more violence in this chapter! and minor character death

“Keith.”

The voices around him are muffled, as if he’s still trapped underwater—or perhaps _they_ are, calling out to him from under the waves. 

“... _Keith.”_

Cool water laps at the soles of his feet and spills around his ankles, tendrils of seafoam clinging to his skin. Wet sand cradles him. A hand cups around his face and pushes back his damp, tangled hair.

“Shiro?” he murmurs, his dry lips splitting as they’re put to use.

Shiro had washed his hair, once, after Lance accidentally spilled half a lantern’s worth of oil down on him from the crow’s nest. It could be _his_ palm sitting warm on Keith’s chilled skin, and _his_ fingers brushing aside the strands of hair still clinging to his damp skin.

“Keith! Keith. Keith, it’s us! You’re alive. I don’t know _how,_ but you’re alive.”

Keith’s eyes crack open by a sliver and the sun above blinds him. Groaning, he blinks until Pidge’s grime-streaked face swims into focus; Hunk hovers just a foot further behind, wringing his hands.

His whole body aches, every muscle and tendon in agony as he forces himself to sit up, foamy water pooling around his calves. Nearby, more refuse from _Kerberos_ lays strewn across the beach—personal effects, crates of rope and splintered planks, heaps of wet cloth cast up like dead kelp.

The ship herself sits capsized in the island’s natural bay, caught fast on a jutting rise of volcanic stone. It’s a pitiful sight, the home he has known for years now suddenly upended. Gone. It tugs Keith’s heartstrings into knots, but not more than—

“Shiro,” he murmurs again, looking hopefully to Hunk and Pidge. Keith knows, however much his stomach twists and drops at the thought, that Shiro is long gone from his grasp. He isn’t ready to face it yet, though, much less tell the others. “Have you seen him? Did he wash up, too? Is he…”

Hunk’s gaze slides to the side, avoiding Keith’s eyes. His waistcoat is spotted with crimson and his sleeves stained up to their elbows, and Keith guesses the casualties from the strike must be dire. “None of us have found any sign of the captain yet.”

With a deep, dispirited sigh, Pidge adds, “Come on, Keith. Let’s get you to my father so he can give you a look over.”

* * *

It takes three days for a merchant ship to happen upon them, drawn in by the black smoke of the pitch they’ve been burning day and night.

It’s lucky that the _Kerberos_ was only a couple of days out of port when they set anchor that fateful night. It’s lucky that they were stranded right along an oft-used trade route rather than some uncharted island. It’s lucky that many of the ship’s supplies washed ashore with the survivors, keeping them sheltered and well-fed while they waited.

For Keith, though, who had spent those three days pacing up and down the shore, frantic with the thought of what Sendak might be doing to Shiro at this very moment, whatever fortune smiled on them is of little comfort. Too much time has been lost already, and every additional hour of travel grates at his wafer-thin patience like a blade over a whetstone.

Keith dutifully helps bury the dead and ferry the injured to their savior merchant ship. When he boards it himself, all he has to his name are his dagger and the gloves Shiro gifted him—and Shiro’s violin, too, its waterlogged case having washed ashore not far from where he first woke. Keith doubts if it can be made to play again, but…

It’s important to Shiro. _Precious._ A gift from his mother, passed down from her grandmother, and so Keith will keep it safe in the meantime, until he can find Shiro and bring him home. 

It takes another four days to sail back to port, and Keith spends the whole voyage curled in on himself in a hammock, feeling like a powderkeg awaiting a spark. His eyes are raw and red-rimmed. He can’t bring himself to eat, even when Hunk brings him broth and threatens to spoonfeed him. At night, he tussles with obsessive thoughts of sneaking above deck and taking the wheel—the merchant ship sails too goddamn slow for his sanity, and Keith _knows_ he could push her faster—or outright stealing a longboat and rowing out to sea.

But that would be madness. Foolishness. Without a ship of his own, the only way Keith can chase Shiro down and save him is with the might of the navy alongside him, and reckless impulsivity will only get him locked in a stockade somewhere, of no help to Shiro at all. He _knows_ this.

Matt and Lance take turns keeping vigil over him anyway, as if afraid that he might jump ship at any moment.

And when Keith’s cold, paralyzing despondency abates long enough to let him lapse into half an hour of restless sleep, he dreams—of the risen _Songbird_ carrying him to Shiro with full sails, of hunting Sendak like a phantom ship haunts the living, of ripping apart the _Purification’s_ hull with his bare hands, if he has to.

* * *

The seaside city bustles all around Keith, who stands at the docks and once more seriously contemplates commandeering one of the ships sitting in port. It would be damn near impossible to pull off, but after waiting so long for the admiralty’s response, Keith is itching for it.

Because the longer they delay action, whether to seek and recover Shiro or to offer a generous ransom for him, the likelier and likelier it is that Sendak will have— 

Keith can’t bring himself to pursue that line of thought. Time and again it makes him dizzy with rage, his stomach turning itself into corkscrews. His hands clench tight, their knuckles blanching bone-white as Keith forces himself back into a state of willfully, stubbornly-kept patience.

Shiro is alive.

He _is._ He _must_ be, Keith reminds himself, both because he cannot fathom any existence that isn’t shared with Shiro and because the Galra are too opportunistic to slaughter a prime bargaining chip like the renowned Captain Takashi Shirogane, the champion of the Coalition Navy. But even if Shiro’s life is deemed too valuable to waste on a blood grudge, there is no reason to think that Sendak won’t find some other way to sate his personal desire for vengeance.

Before Keith’s thoughts can spiral back down that same dismal path, swift, direct footsteps across the sun-stained planks pull his attention back to the here and now. He spies Lieutenant Matt Holt from the corner of his eye and straightens up, nerves buzzing at the terrifying promise of news.

“When are we leaving?” he asks, rushing to meet Matt Holt more than halfway. “Did the queen issue a ransom for him? She’s so fond of Shiro,” Keith babbles out, thinking of all the times Shiro had told him about the hunting parties and masked balls he’d attended in her company when he was younger. “She would pay any sum of gold for his safe return! I know it.”

Matt’s mouth parts, a hesitant, hopeless little sigh slipping out. He meets Keith’s pressing stare with a weary look that doesn’t lack for compassion. “If the Galra cared to exchange him for gold, then yes, the queen certainly would.”

There is a dim resignation in the way Matt says it. And as he gives a thick swallow and stares at Keith, quietly imploring him to understand, Keith finally does: the Galrea Empire won’t ask for a ransom, and neither would they accept one.

They won’t give Shiro back so easily, if at all. They have a golden goose of a prisoner—a beloved friend of the Altean queen, who is surely suffering just knowing Shiro is at the mercy of the same people who once razed her kingdom, and a dreadfully accomplished navy captain in his own right. The Galra will ask instead for things that would truly bleed Queen Allura to give: embattled territory, trade routes, broken blockades, returns of prisoners who had committed heinous crimes against the Coalition and her people. They will keep Shiro just to lord his captivity over her, to cause her anguish no matter what she chooses.

“Does the admiralty have a lead on where Sendak might be, then? Where the Purification was last sighted?” Keith asks, following close on Matt’s heels as the lieutenant turns and walks toward a shady, empty stretch of dock. No negotiated trade for Shiro’s freedom means that the navy will have to forcibly _take_ him back. “The longer we wait, the more likely it is he’ll be transferred to Beta Traz. We have to hunt down Sendak before that happens, or else it will be ten times harder to free him—”

“Admiral Sanda won’t hear it, Keith,” Matt interrupts, a hand squeezing bruisingly tight around Keith’s shoulder, shaking him slightly. “And all of the admiralty is with her. Even the queen cannot sway them.”

For a split second, Keith reels. Matt’s words wash over him once, twice, and then again. And if it were _him,_ the Red Shrike, who’d been captured, he’d understand the admiralty’s unwillingness to stage a rescue. But it’s _Takashi Shirogane_ who is at stake—a much-loved captain with a loyal crew, a noble bloodline, and perhaps the most impressive victory record in naval history.

“But… we have to bring him back,” Keith says, the words dumbstruck and weak. His shoulders slump as all the weight of the realization crashes over him. “They wouldn’t leave him in the hands of the Galra! Of Sendak! They wouldn’t…”

But Matt’s stony expression and the thin rim of red around his eyes says, _yes, they would and they are,_ and all Keith can think is that he had gotten much too comfortable in his navy uniform, stepping to the beat of their drum. Lax. Lazy. Too trusting, if he ever bought for a moment that the people sitting at the top give a lick about anyone toiling under them—even a beacon like Shiro, born of the right stock and blessed with all the right connections.

Keith’s blood boils, fumes, threatens to steam him from the inside out.

“So, you’re giving up?” he accuses Matt, a hiss sliding through the narrow gaps of his clenched teeth. He advances with fire in his eyes, spitting venom. “After _everything_ he’s done for you and me and everyone else, you’re going to fuck off and—” 

“Keith! Rein yourself in,” Matt whispers in his lieutenant tone, leaning in close enough to shock Keith’s eyes wide open. “The only ones giving up around here are the admiralty. They’ll say it’s a damned shame, what happened to Shiro. They’ll publically honor him and mourn him. They won’t chase him to the gates of hell, though.”

They won’t. _They won’t._ Frustrated tears sting at the corners of Keith’s eyes, unwilling to be blinked away. Anger and absolute futility wage a total war inside of him, making his stomach shrivel and his heart ache, and Keith wonders if any part of him will be left whole after the wracking emotion passes.

“But I suspect _you_ would,” Matt continues, his eyebrows lifting.

“If I still had a ship,” Keith grits out, hating how helpless he feels. If he still had his _Songbird,_ he’d be pursuing Sendak already, night and day; he’d be burning down any vessel that dared cross his path along the way, too.

“That’s what I figured.” Despite the tiredness written around Matt’s eyes, he smiles. From his breast pocket he fishes out a wax-sealed envelope and a weighty leather satchel, passing both to Keith. “This comes courtesy of a _certain royal_ who would very much like Shiro safely returned, though her own hands are tied.”

As his arms are filled, Keith’s heart begins to lift again. 

“Now, to give chase with a ship of the Coalition navy, you’d have to get the whole crew to mutiny—which is probably why they went to great pains to divvy up the _Kerberos’_ seamen across a dozen new stations and assignments, myself included,” Matt explains, giving Keith a rueful half-smile. “So, she passed along her recommendation of a captain and crew who might be suitable to hire out for such a perilous, time-sensitive mission. Of course, you’re also free to assemble a team of your own making, if you’d rather.”

Keith would, truthfully, but time is short and Shiro’s life hangs in the balance. 

He rips open the envelope and finds it reads, _Lotor, captain of the Sincline._ The rest of the perfumed, finely pressed paper suggests various ports where Lotor might be found, given recent reports. One such place isn’t too far up the coast, in a lawless little Unilu inlet.

In all his time as a pirate, Keith had never once crossed paths with Lotor at sea or in port, but the fallen prince’s story had understandably traveled far and wide—Emperor Zarkon’s only son, disgraced and exiled, who turned to piracy and preyed solely upon his father’s own fleet. Keith can surmise why Allura would suggest such a man to him as a makeshift ally in this dangerous pursuit.

Within the accompanying satchel, Keith spies the glimmer of silver and gold minted into thin bars, stacked atop each other to the tune of a considerable fortune. He blinks. Then he swallows, stuffs the letter and the gold into the bag slung over his shoulder, and pushes Shiro’s water-warped violin case into Matt’s hands.

“Hold onto this for me, until I’m able to bring him back,” Keith says, his voice wavering. “Keep it safe.”

Matt nods, the surprised part of his lips soon settling into a grim little line.

Keith’s fingers linger on the intricately carved mahogany, not quite ready to let go of this last little piece of Shiro he’s been able to carry around with him. But he has a mission, now, and the means to carry it out.

And Shiro needs him.

* * *

Keith takes passage on a ship destined for the nearest favored port of the pirate prince, hoping the timing will be right; he can’t afford to spend weeks hopping from one seaside city to another while Shiro is held prisoner in enemy hands.

The moment he disembarks, he starts searching the names of the ships moored along the docks, his heartbeat ringing in his ears. There are crafts from Empire and Coalition territories alike, here, and pirate banners of all stripes. Keith still recognizes many of them, though it’s been years since he set foot anywhere this lawless.

And then he sees it, moored on a dock halfway across the bay: the _Sincline._

Just a few hands are milling about the deck, loading and unloading, and so Keith sets off toward the seedy, bustling port city that lies ahead, the rowdy cheers of its streets drifting over the darkening waves.

He steps quickly through streets lined in freshly lit lanterns, peering into taverns and bars along the way. He ignores the calls of street vendors and fences looking to buy stolen goods, sharply rebuking any that get too pushy and slow him down. A few drunks eventually point Keith to a gaudy inn at the far end of town when he asks if they’ve seen Lotor or his crew around, and Keith soldiers toward it with his head lowered and his shoulders hunched forward.

It turns out the imperial prince is easy to spot in a crowd. At a gambling table set up in the back of the inn, he sits at the center of a flattering crowd of men and women, a languid picture of royalty despite his one-time fall from grace. A silky curtain of white hair spills down over his shoulders, bright against the cool brown of his skin; his chin rests against the curled fingers of his left hand as he watches the others at the table roll for a pile of gold and gems, a half-smile struck across his lips.

And Keith doesn’t bother with any niceties as he forces his way through the crowd, pushing aside the figures encircling the betting table in the hopes of getting Lotor’s attention.

It works. The boisterous voices in the crowded room lower to a murmur, all eyes on this new-coming intruder. Lotor’s attention slides to him, a displeased little curl to his lips; then his chilly expression shifts in a blink, more intrigued than annoyed.

Suddenly, Keith finds himself eye to eye with a woman with dark, jaw-length hair and a pointed face. She places herself squarely between Keith and his line of sight on Lotor, pointedly eyeing the dagger and sword both worn on Keith’s hip. A thin Galran accent trails off of her every word as she asks, “And who are _you_ to interrupt His Highness’s game, exactly?”

“Acxa, it’s fine. Let him through,” Lotor calls out from behind her.

Acxa’s glare doesn’t wane as she takes a half-step to the side and allows Keith to brusquely shoulder past, the rest of the crowd giving her plenty of breathing room.

Lotor’s chin lifts as Keith comes to stand straight across from him, those hands wrapped in Shiro’s gloves resting on the gilded edges of the table, heedless of the gold coins and trinkets piled up along its borders. He squints, a delicate crease between his brows as he studies the man who’d stormed in and ruined the partying mood.

“ _Keith,_ isn’t it?” Lotor asks, a satisfied little flicker of recognition moving across his otherwise still features. “The one who let the Coalition clip his wings and turn him into a dog of the navy. Although, considering where we currently are… are you perhaps back to going by the Red Shrike?”

“No. Just Keith.” The moniker had never been his choice, anyway, and those days are long gone, even if he is turning back to his pirate ways, in a sense. Keith ignores the rest of Lotor’s thrown barbs and bites out a short, “Let’s talk.”

Lotor’s eyebrows lift, surprised by the sudden demand. His pleasant smile belies the sharpness of his voice as he asks, “Do we have business together?”

Under the watchful eyes of Acxa and Lotor’s other loyal guards, Keith draws out six or seven of the gold bars he’d tucked away in his jacket and tosses them onto the table, the precious metal clinking as it tumbles toward Lotor.

The prince looks down at the thin bars of Altean-minted gold, his head cocked.

“I have more than enough to afford your attention,” Keith assures him.

Curious, Lotor picks up one of the golden bars and flips it between his fingers, his smile slowly returning. He looks from the Keith to the offering on the table and then back again. “Very well. Let’s speak in private, shall we?”

Keith shoulders through the packed crowd to follow Lotor as he rises and leaves the gaming hall, flanked on either side by Galran women of intimidating presence. The guards station themselves outside of the heavy door that Lotor leads him through, leaving the two of them alone in a finely appointed suite with plush, mismatched furniture and luxurious clothing strewn about.

Keith sees no point in wasting time.

“You were recommended to me,” he immediately announces, handing Lotor the letter bearing Queen Allura’s handwriting.

It was left unsigned, but the note’s flowing script sparks an instant flicker of recognition in the disgraced Galran prince. He lifts the perfumed paper to his nose, pensive as he breathes in the faint smell of roses and juniberry; as if assured of the letter’s veracity, Lotor sighs and reads it once more, his thumb stroking along the letter’s scalloped edges.

Keith dumps a small mountain of gold and silver over the nearby divan, hoping it will further tempt Lotor to agree to his terms. By comparison, though, the prince seems far more taken with the sparse little letter.

“And what exactly are you hoping to hire my crew for?” Lotor asks after a moment, finally tearing his eyes away from the queen’s handwriting.

“A personal favor to Her Majesty,” Keith answers, tactfully drawing on what little background Matt had given him before they’d parted ways—that Lotor and Queen Allura knew each other as children, before war spilled over between their kingdoms, and the prince had never lost his fondness for her. “To hunt down a ship of the Imperial fleet with immediate urgency.”

“And sink her?” Lotor questions, for the first time looking doubtful—looking for the catch, probably, since it is well known that he has a great passion for plundering and sinking his former Empire’s ships. 

“No. Not—not right away, at least. I need to rescue a prisoner from her brig, first,” Keith explains, his own nerves making his hands tremble around the satchel still holding half the gold. If Lotor denies him here, he really will have to steal a ship and press its crew to serve him. “I don’t care what you do to the Purification after, but not one cannon shot can touch her while he is still on board.”

“Ah,” Lotor sighs, content to have found the tricky stipulation he’d been expecting. He relaxes a hair as he peers down at Allura’s letter, then at the gold and silver, and then back to Keith. “That is a markedly more difficult endeavor, then. Tracking an Imperial ship at sea, sneaking aboard undetected, locating a captive, breaking him free, and escaping unharmed?” he muses aloud. “Hm. Those are not winning odds.”

Keith’s jaw clenches, and so do his fists. If he thought fighting could sway Lotor to do his bidding, he would in a heartbeat; as it is, he thinks he might have to beg and promise away years of his own life in service instead.

“But this _is_ quite a lot of gold, and I happen to have a vested, _personal_ interest in seeing Sendak driven to the bottom of the sea,” Lotor murmurs, the lengthy nails of his fingers strumming against the nearby table.

Keith pauses in the middle of worrying his chapped lower lip, gaze darting up to Lotor. “You know him?”

“Quite well, unfortunately. He was always one of my father’s favorites, and Sendak made sure I was _very_ aware of it,” Lotor drawls, a shade of something murderously dark creeping into his otherwise pleasant expression. “If he went through the trouble of taking your man alive, I am afraid you will be quite lucky to retrieve him in one piece.”

 _“Sendak_ will be lucky if I find Shiro in one piece,” Keith corrects, feeling fire and brimstone in his blood. “Anything less and I’m taking it out of his hide.”

That’s not quite true, though. Keith means to kill Sendak, regardless of Shiro’s state when he finds him. Preferably in the most devastating manner possible, although he knows better than to be picky about it.

Lotor’s smile is as sharp and canny as the rest of his features, and under any other circumstances, Keith would never grant him even an ounce of trust. Under that polite, cultured veneer lies a man just as willing to wade neck-deep into bloodshed as Keith is, and just as practiced at it. All the fine breeding and trappings of wealth in the world cannot disguise what Lotor is at heart—a murderous pirate, much the same as Keith, who primarily trades in vengeance and grudges.

“I think we can do business after all, Keith,” Lotor decides, already reaching for a bottle of champagne left sitting on one of the room’s mahogany tables. Even his softest grin somehow manages to be hungry and sharklike. “And I think we are going to get along.”

* * *

The _Sincline_ moves fast, but Keith is certain he could sail her faster.

Acxa glowers at him from behind the helm when he suggests as much, and Lotor swiftly steers Keith away from the quarterdeck before his sailing master makes good on her cold-blooded threats to ‘swab Keith across the deck and then let Zethrid wring him out to dry.’

Over the following days, Keith is tense and agitated from sunrise to moonset. He eats in ravenous fits or not at all, depending on whether anger or mournfulness grips him. Sleep rarely comes to him for more than an hour or two at a time, and not just because he is the lone newcomer on an unfamiliar ship, both his life and Shiro’s hanging in the care of strangers bound to him only by gold and a disgraced prince’s word.

He has surprisingly few issues with Lotor’s crew, overall. Keith knows his quick temper and bitter moods are not their fault, even if this awareness does nothing to curb his misery; Lotor’s surprisingly disciplined pirates seem to warily understand, giving Keith a generous berth whenever he stalks his way around the deck, knuckles bone white as he resists the urge to seize the ship for himself and pursue Shiro more fiercely.

“Come drink with us,” Ezor says to him on the fourth morning of their departure from port, peering at him upside down from the rigging, her legs wound through the heavy, hempen ropes like a carnival acrobat. “All the sulking in the world won’t help us find Sendak any faster, you know. You need to sleep, at least.”

Keith… can’t argue her second point. He has to be ready to act if and when they find the _Purification,_ and at the moment he is practically dead on his feet. The alcohol might help put him down for the night, at least, and force his anxious mind to let his body rest.

So, with his shoulders squared and a tired scowl plastered on his lips, Keith follows Ezor’s bouncing steps to the open air of the upper deck, where several dozen people have gathered with bottles of rum and mugs of beer in hand, laughing and singing under the stars.

For lack of any better company, Keith fills himself a cup and gravitates toward Lotor’s side, deciding to press his luck and urge the prince to let him guide the _Sincline_ to Sendak’s ship. He can’t take the wheel himself—no one but Shiro would ever trust him to do such a thing in such short order—but he can at least try to point the way. Try to do _something_ other than mill endlessly about this ship, utterly useless as he waits for word of a sighting that may never come.

“It’s been three days already,” he mutters, just loud enough for Lotor to hear him over the rousing shanty the rest of the crew is belting out. “We can’t keep wasting time when it comes to finding Shi—Captain Shirogane.” 

“I have us shadowing a frequent channel for Imperial cruisers, Keith,” Lotor tells him for the fourth or fifth time. “Our current course offers us the best odds of crossing paths with the Purification on its way to or from Naxela, Feyiv, or Daibazaal. Or are you capable of divining your precious captain’s location at will?”

“No,” Keith answers, his voice hoarse. He sips at his rum just to wet his lips. “But… I have a feeling.”

“A _feeling,”_ Lotor repeats, his head tipping back as he lets out a short, sharp laugh. “Almost ten years I have spent hunting down the emperor’s armada, learning all the best places to strike them, and you think we ought to throw out all my planning to chase—” he pauses, his stare sliding to Keith before the rest of his head lazily turns in his direction—“a _feeling.”_

“A powerful feeling,” Keith amends, hissing the low words between his teeth. He lets his eyes slip shut, drawing on the shallow well of patience he’d made for himself over the seasons spent by Shiro’s side as he wills himself not to spoil his best chance at finding Shiro. “A meaningful one. I might not have sailed as many years as you, nor felled as many Imperial ships, but I have a strong sense of the sea, too.”

Lotor scoffs. “I was recommended to you for my expertise, was I not?”

“And our overlapping interests,” Keith murmurs. His hands wind tighter around the half-filled cup in his hands; frustrated, he throws back a long swig, jaw stiffening as the rum burns a fiery trail down his throat. “Look, I can’t explain it to your satisfaction, but I can find him faster than we will on our current course. I know it.”

Maybe it’s the hard liquor in Lotor’s stomach that does it, but the prince heaves out a long sigh and swaggers up the stairs to the quarter deck, beckoning Keith to follow.

Acxa still stands at her post, unmoved by the choruses of sea shanties and peals of half-drunken laughter wafting up from the main deck. Her sharp gaze pierces the both of them in turn before settling questioningly on Lotor, her much-respected captain.

“Fine,” Lotor continues to Keith, waving an arm in the direction of the helm. “It is your man and your gold hanging in the balance—or Allura’s, rather, that she entrusted to you. Even if you sail us in circles for the next six days, I will still get the other half of what I am owed and she cannot hold me at fault. So knock yourself out.”

“Y-Your Highness,” Acxa snaps out, astonishment writ across her stern, pretty features. “What are you saying?”

Keith ignores her, along with Lotor’s attempt to assuage his most loyal follower’s outrage. He closes his eyes and breathes deep and thinks of Shiro. In his mind, he reaches out—through sea waves and salt air, and hopes to find some answering flicker of presence.

At first, there is nothing. Keith’s brows pinch, troubled at the empty feeling that settles over him. And then he wonders what the hell he’d been expecting. It’s not as though his soul is tethered to Shiro’s, after all. They stand separated by leagues and leagues, as good as a world apart, and Keith isn’t really blessed by any goddess of the sea, no matter what a certain starry-eyed captain had once fancifully mused in his private journal.

As he thinks of Shiro anew—the brightness of his smile, the depths of his eyes, the affection that rolls off of him like the fragrant island flowers Shiro would carry back on board to brighten his cabin—a little twitch runs up Keith’s fingertips, like they’re missing the spokes of the wheel under them. A gentle billow of wind folds around him, lifting the loose ends of his hair and ghosting over his skin, as close as a whisper. It feels like an answer.

“South-southeast,” Keith says, an even, certain calm overtaking the thin, fraying desperation that’s gripped his voice for days. The tension bleeds out of his stiffly set shoulders and clenched hands. His eyes open again, and Keith senses what he cannot see—a glimmer lost somewhere in the distance, beyond the horizon, like a fallen star. A beacon meant for him alone. 

“This is a farce, Lotor,” Acxa grits out, exasperated with the both of them. “A _folly._ You cannot seriously be considering indulging him in this!”

But Lotor merely stares at Keith, his expression pinched with a mix of puzzlement and shrewd doubt.

“Just do as he says, Acxa. Let our esteemed guest set the course,” Lotor rules before immediately taking another swig from his glass. He meets Keith’s gaze and gives him an accommodating, faintly grim smile. “Let us hope, for your very dear captain’s sake, that your gut inclination outweighs all my better sense.”

* * *

Acxa is the first to quietly murmur a shocked apology to Keith when they glimpse the _Purification_ less than two days later—a mere speck on the horizon, deliberately kept distant enough that Sendak won’t realize he’s being tailed.

Lotor’s crew abruptly crackles with excited gossip and speculation. Many have their own grievances with the Empire, Keith has noticed, and all hold a great deal of loyalty to its one-time prince; they are keenly thrilled by the prospect of finally bringing down Sendak, too.

And it goes beyond that, now, of course. Plenty of the crew had overheard Keith’s willful talk of a _gut feeling_ he needed to chase, laughing to themselves about it the morning after when they thought Keith was out of earshot. Now, the crew whispers amongst themselves more speculatively, looking askance at Keith whenever he passes. _Red Shrike_ is murmured behind his back more than once, along with _sea witch_ and _seer,_ and Keith nearly rolls his eyes. He would’ve, probably, if he weren’t already so full of gratitude and relief at the thought of having Sendak within striking distance and Shiro’s rescue close at hand.

As they distantly trail the _Purification,_ Keith thrums with energy. If he were still the man he was two years ago, he would be raging like a wildfire right now, charging ahead at full tilt. As it is, Keith is tempered enough to rein himself in—for a short while, anyway, well aware that his best chance of saving Shiro will come if they bide their time a touch longer.

“Tonight, then,” Keith tells Lotor as soon as he is invited into the captain’s cabin, only the shade of a question in his eyes. He can wait no longer to pull Shiro from Sendak’s clutches. “There will barely be any moonlight at all for them to spot us by. It could be our last chance for a clean strike before they make the approach to Beta Traz.”

Lotor nods where he sits leaned against his desk, a glass of white wine already in his hands. “Tonight. And how exactly do you want us to go about this business of rescuing Mr. Shirogane?”

Keith exhales heavily through his nose. Ideally, he wants as little interference from Lotor and his crew as possible—less chance of someone slipping up and making his own mission harder. “No engagement until Shiro is free and clear of the Purification. We douse every light and silence every bell, and after nightfall, Acxa can bring us closer to firing range. I’ll take a longboat the rest of the way to the Purification by myself, kill Sendak, free Shiro, and beat a hasty escape before the whole ship is roused. You swoop in to pierce her hull and sink her, and we’ll rendezvous with you once the battle is done.”

Above the rim of his wine glass, Lotor’s eyebrows lift. _“Kill_ Sendak?” he asks, licking his lips as he sets his drink down on his desk. “Better to avoid him and focus on finding Shirogane. The man has all the cruelty of my father and twice his muscle. You do not want to go toe-to-toe with him, I promise. Better to let him drown with the rest.”

“Shiro is my first and foremost concern, always,” Keith tells Lotor, matter-of-fact. “But yes, if I cross paths with Sendak, I will not let him live. I will sleep easier _—Shiro_ will sleep easier—with the certainty that he is dead.” 

“Very well. It is your business, in the end. I will make sure you have a longboat outfitted with anything you might possibly need and do my best to assist you.” Lotor frowns and primly crosses his arms, a slender finger tapping along his bicep. “And what are we to do if your efforts go awry?”

“Awry?”

“If you should perish along the way,” Lotor says, shrugging his shoulders. “If you should become trapped within the bowels of the Purification yourself, thrown into the brig beside your _Shiro._ What then?”

Keith hadn’t considered it. Saving Shiro is a must. He cannot fathom any thread woven into his future where he fails to bring him back. “There’s no reason to worry about that. I would break every bone in my body if it meant saving him. And I won’t die before he’s safe.”

Lotor sighs and rubs at one temple. For a moment, he looks annoyed enough to argue such a foolishly sentimental answer to a question of strategic contingencies; then his peeved expression smoothes into one of begrudging acceptance.

“If it were anyone else making such sensational claims, I would dismiss them out of hand. With you, I am increasingly inclined to believe.” He considers Keith for a moment, looking for all the world like he wishes he _didn’t_ lend so much credence to those bold vows. “There is something strange about you, Keith.”

Inwardly, Keith is thrown by the sudden admission. Outwardly, all he can do is agree. “Aye. A pirate of ill-repute risking it all for the navy captain who sank his ship and took him captive. I have heard many times that it’s a difficult turn of events to fathom—”

“Not that,” Lotor cuts in, gracing him with a cool smile. “Although, yes, I find your devotion to the man who snatched away everything you had made of yourself to be quite unusual as well. I mean that _you,_ Keith, are strange. In your way of being.” 

At Keith’s growing frown and the deepening furrow between his brows, Lotor clears his throat and continues.

“I grew up around the occult, you know. After my mother’s death, my father turned to advisors who claimed to know fortunes and spellcraft, each of them promising him conquest and victory. And I thought most of it to be absolute codswallop, of course, but…” Lotor trails off, his gaze distant and his posture shifting uncomfortably. “There were instances where I did wonder if maybe there was something unfolding beyond my understanding. Some force I did not recognize.” 

He pauses.

“I felt that way again when you stood there and picked a direction to chase, and now it has led us right to the Purification.” A stilted silence follows. Lotor picks up his wine and drinks again, then peers into the glass like he wishes it were something stronger. “I am a man of science, first and foremost, like my mother before me. But I will be damned if there is not something unnatural about the way you work.”

“Unnatural?” Keith questions, beginning to bristle where he stands. “I am only as I have ever been.”

“I mean it in the least offensive terms,” Lotor says, doing his part to look charmingly reassuring. “Do you truly not feel some inkling of it as well? I heard so many rumors of you during your days as the Red Shrike. At the time, I took it for superstitious gossip, but it seems there is more truth to the chatter than I had realized.” 

His eyes narrow, studying Keith more intently. Lotor’s head tilts, and Keith thinks he sees a cold shadow of Shiro’s brilliant curiosity in those vibrantly blue eyes—wonder without the glow of admiration behind it, all fascination unbridled by soft looks and caring thoughts.

“There is something extraordinary about you,” Lotor decides, his intense, prying gaze finally flitting away from Keith. “I wish I understood it.”

Hah. Little chance of that, given that Keith barely understands it himself.

Years at sea have shown Keith that few, if any, can sail the way he can. Others don’t listen to the waves and hear the tides’ will, nor feel the kiss of sunny salt air and know a storm brews beyond the horizon. It _is_ strange, the way he can carve a path through perilous reefs on instinct alone, dancing around the splintered carcasses of less fortunate ships.

His life has been marked by these quiet curiosities, he supposes. The dagger left from a mother he had never met, its blade keener than any whetstone could ever achieve and marked with a faint, unrecognizable inscription. His lonely, empty childhood, bereft of that sense of belonging in the company of other people. The unsettling, frightening reactions to his singing—barring his father and Shiro, of course. And, perhaps more than anything else, there is his preternatural luck upon the waves.

Keith’s mouth thins into a firm line. He has nothing to say that will sate Lotor’s curiosity, and no interest in doing so besides. 

“Tonight,” Keith reminds the prince as he turns on his heel and heads for the door, knowing he needs time to dwell on the task at hand. “I’ll go make myself ready.”

* * *

The longboat settles quietly into the lapping waves, its faint outline nearly swallowed up in the moonless dark. Keith clambers down the rope ladder lashed to the side of the ship and settles down, feeling around himself for the oars. Above, a handful of Lotor’s crew murmur their wishes for his good luck and a safe voyage. The captain himself merely stares down at Keith from the railing, expression unreadable, and then sweeps away to make the _Sincline_ ready for the imminent assault.

Alone in the longboat, Keith starts rowing with quick, powerful strokes, his eyes fixed on the receding shape of the _Sincline._

Not a single lantern nor candle is lit aboard the ship. Any polished metal or glass that might catch the wan light of the slivered moon, the sprawling stars, or the distant flashes of lightning crackling along the horizon has already been covered in burlap or black shoe polish. The crew still lingering along the railing watches Keith depart in utter silence, their inky silhouettes quickly fading into the all-consuming dark of the night.

And Keith rows, and rows, and rows. It is a fair distance between the _Purification_ and the _Sincline,_ which lies in wait just out of the Imperial cruiser’s range, and he is only one man. The black waters under his little longboat seem to buoy him along, though, giving way gracefully as his oars cut into the waves, helping him to race toward Shiro before Sendak’s crew realizes they’re not alone in this stretch of open sea, and before the storm he now sees billowing in the distance whips its way here, too.

There is no time to waste. Shiro needs him, and Keith needs Shiro safe and well in his arms.

Keith rows as close to the _Purification’s_ lumbering, creaking form as he dares. Her sails are drawn, tied up tight for the night so that the ship doesn’t drift off course. A few watchmen along the railings seem to have noticed the distantly rising storm on the horizon and are busily trying to gauge whether their ship lays in its path.

Keith is grateful for their distraction.

Letting out a silent sigh, he peels off his gloves and leaves them in the longboat, along with the crimson coat he’d taken to wearing once the navy made it clear that without Shiro standing behind him, they had no desire to tolerate his presence at all. He strips off his boots, too, and sets them neatly on the boat’s floor; his pistol and long, heavy sword are left beside them. With just his mother’s dagger secure on his hip, Keith hoists himself over the side of the longboat and slips silently into the water.

He swims the final distance to the _Purification’s_ stern, gliding just under the inky surface of the water as often as he can. The sea around him is pitch black and endlessly vast, its depths a void and Keith a mere speck flitting along its borders. The salt water is cool enough to make him shiver, leeching at his heat and bogging down the fabric of his clothing.

Keith dives under the surface once more, holding his breath and hoping no night watchmen happens to look over the railing and spy the ripples of his movement. The sea around him is deafening, already astir from the storm building to the west, and the groans of the _Purification’s_ wood and iron reverberate through the water like a beast rumbling in its sleep.

Once within the ship’s umbral shadow, the crown of Keith’s head slowly rises out of the water—just to his eyes, first, peering up to make sure he is unseen, and then he lifts his chin and allows himself a measured breath.

His ribbon slipped loose at some point, that red silk lost somewhere in the waves behind him. Keith’s hair pools around him in a dark, sleek curtain, inkier than the water around him. It plasters to his skin like sheets of seaweed as he rises up out of the ocean, his blunt nails scrabbling for purchase along the _Purification’s_ slimy, slippery timbers.

It is after midnight. The ship is quiet, aside from the occasional whistles and calls of the crew above deck, keeping watch on the lightning that sparks in the distance. Keith pulls out his dagger and delicately sinks it into the wood of the hull, in the sealed crevices between slats of oak, and inchingly hauls himself up the sheer side of the ship’s stern.

Above him is the window to the captain’s cabin, sitting unlatched and open. Keith chances to reach his hand up for the sill, praying that Sendak is either asleep or roaming elsewhere aboard the ship, and holds his breath as he heaves himself up and into the roomy quarters.

The pads of his bare, trembling feet settle on dry wood and the plush weave of an Imperial rug. Cold saltwater runs down Keith in rivulets, his hair and soaked clothes dripping. It pools under him and slowly starts to leak through the cracks in the floorboards. He must look a terrifying, half-drowned mess, like some water wraith risen to drag others down to the bottom of the sea.

Keith even _feels_ like a water wraith, dripping with grim purpose and conviction. Especially as his gaze settles on the other figure standing in the darkened cabin—a broad, hulking silhouette that he can barely separate from the shadows yet recognizes in an instant.

 _Sendak._ He looms there half-dressed, his scarred, sun-scorched skin bare from the waist up. A mane of beard and dark, unruly hair frames his severe, square-jawed face. A gilded eyepatch still covers his right eye—the one he’d lost in the same engagement that took Shiro’s right arm. His other eye is opened wide, taking in the sight of the slight, drenched man who just crawled in through his window. 

Keith’s sides still heave from the exertion of scaling the _Purification’s_ water-soaked hull, but it is murderous intent that drives him to pant like a cornered animal . His fingers tighten around the grip of the dagger in his hands, every drop of his blood alive and abuzz with the need to kill before Shiro suffers even one more indignity.

Keith expects Sendak to roar out for aid, to alert the marines, the crew, the masked, cloaked druid that always accompanies any Imperial ship. Instead, Sendak’s astonished expression turns, and for a moment Keith would almost think it admiring.

 _“You,”_ Sendak whispers, a cruel smile stretching across his lips, baring sharp canines. He doesn’t raise his voice or even give the slightest hint that he finds Keith’s intrusion a grave cause for concern. “You’re here for him, are you? Too late, I think. He’s less resilient than I’d taken him for, which hasn’t made for much in the way of entertainment.”

Sendak takes up a sword lying across the nearby table and lumbers toward him, his remaining eye alight with a cruel flicker of excitement. He makes lazy slashes through the air as he advances, passing just shy of meeting flesh as Keith dances backward. There is an arrogance to the way Sendak moves, a swagger—perhaps because Keith is less than half his size and armed with only a dagger. Or perhaps because he thinks to take Keith alive, if possible, and eke from him whatever sadistic pleasure he felt Shiro had denied him.

And though Keith is weary and shivering, ferocity ignites within him like a lightning strike to kindling, all his pent-up rage finding an outlet at last.

He surges toward Sendak like the fluid crack of a whip, ducking under the deadly sweep of the long sword before springing up like a wolf lunging toward a bared throat. It’s been a long time since Keith has fought as desperately as this—barefoot and barely armed, set against someone who easily dwarfs him, and he almost feels like a wiry half-child on the streets again.

Sendak reacts just quickly enough to turn his blade down toward Keith, aiming for his throat. It’s a near miss—Keith twists his head in the nick of time, and the sword’s edge catches him along the jaw instead. The blade scrapes jarringly over bone before sliding up along his cheek, slipping away just before reaching his right eye. 

Keith never slows, gritting his teeth through the glass-sharp sting as he throws himself toward the behemoth of a man. Once in close, he grabs Sendak’s outstretched swordarm, wrenching his wrist around until the bones within pop and the sword falls from his hand. Before Sendak can cry out, Keith swings his other hand around with venomous strength and drives his dagger into firm, heavily muscled flesh.

The blade sinks into the base of Sendak’s throat, its honed, piercing tip backed with enough force to sever through sternum and spine. Blood burbles out at once, thick and warm where it laps against Keith’s wrist and courses down his forearm.

At last, Sendak tries to call out for his own, all pride cast aside, but all that issues from his mouth is a wet sputter, little flecks of spittle and foamy blood dotting his lips. His burly hands tear violently at Keith, nails raking over his slick skin, trying desperately to twist his arm or wring his neck. But Keith stands his ground as unflinchingly as a reaper, unrelenting until the last furious, disbelieving hiss dies on Sendak’s tongue and his one remaining eye goes vacant and unfocused.

And then Keith carefully, _carefully_ bears his heavy body to the floor of the cabin, wary of making any further sound. He takes a moment to steady his breathing, staring at the cooling body on the floor as it bleeds out onto that fine, handwoven rug. Necessity demanded he kill Sendak quickly and cleanly and silently, and it irks Keith to know that Shiro’s tormentor got off easier than he deserved.

But he needs to move on, and quickly.

Keith’s cold, damp feet pad along the wooden floors of the unfamiliar ship. Outside of the cabin, all is still quiet. Keith pauses, listens, and then steals through the dark, cramped halls and down narrow stairs, clinging to the deepest shadows. With his back pressed to the wall, Keith holds his breath as one of the crew on the middle watch ambles past, yawning. Then he’s off again, darting his way deeper into the _Purification’s_ hold, where the brig most likely lay.

Sure enough, he sights a narrow compartment lined with stout wooden bars ahead. Across from the brig, an Imperial marine idles, half-asleep on his feet.

Keith makes devastatingly quick work of him, driving his dagger deep into the guard’s throat to choke off any sound that might slip out. Wild, fearful eyes fix on him, mouth opened wide in shock; the guard is younger than Keith, barely grown into the uniform he wears, and once upon a time that wouldn’t have bothered Keith at all.

Years at Shiro’s side have softened some of his blunter edges, though, in this way and many more. Keith doesn’t flinch away from the dying guard’s last little gasps, watching until he’s certain there is no more threat. Then he wrenches the blade back out, lets the guard’s limp form crumple to the floor, and turns away.

Within the tiny, barred prison lies a body curled up on its side, facing one of the brig’s solid walls. Keith’s heart burns in his chest at the sight of Shiro drawn in on himself so pitifully, his skin sallow under mottled bruises and his sides fluttering with shallow breath. He whispers out Shiro’s name, wanting to reassure him that someone finally came to rescue him, that he isn’t alone anymore, that he’ll be safe soon.

Shiro doesn’t move.

Keith grabs hold of the bars and gives them a testing tug. He bypasses the lock completely and instead jams his dagger into the hinges that hold the door in place, trusting the blade he’s carried since he was a child not to snap at the strain. The metal gives a low groan as it is forcibly bent out of shape; then it pops, the hinge separating completely.

Keith’s hands shake as he works on the next hinge. Without a thought to who might hear, he wrenches the door aside and falls to his knees beside Shiro, turning him over. His hand moves to cup one sunken cheek, frightened to find that Shiro is even colder than he is.

He hooks an arm around Shiro’s middle and heaves him up, supporting all of his captain’s weight against his own narrow, trembling frame. As the ship gives a sudden lurch, Keith’s bare feet slip in the growing pool of blood just outside the brig’s door; he recovers, stepping carefully around the body and maneuvering Shiro over it, too. The halls of the _Purification_ are tight and woefully unfamiliar, forcing Keith to angle himself and Shiro just to pass through them together. The occasional pitching of the ship doesn’t help matters, either.

Keith abandons most pretense of stealth. All he cares about at this point—all he hopes to accomplish, really—is to make it topside with Shiro unharmed, to somehow get him off of the _Purification,_ to safely ferry him away before all hell breaks loose. And they _very nearly_ make it out unseen.

Keith is just peeking out through the companionway, preparing to make a break for it, when a bell begins to toll and the officer on duty relays their orders. The decks below Keith and Shiro come alive with voices and groans, the weary sailors forced to brace for bad weather; the watchmen stationed on the upper deck bustle about, lashing down everything loose and battening down the hatches.

And so Keith has no choice but to hoist Shiro up over his shoulder and bolt, dashing up the last few stairs and hurrying past the scattered, preoccupied nighttime watch. Heads turn toward him, but the Imperial sailors are stunned enough that precious seconds slip by before they lurch into motion again, giving chase.

Keith can only hope that Acxa and Lotor are watching from a distance as he makes a messy, hasty retreat across the _Purification’s_ gangways.

The deck alights with more lanterns and watchfires as the nighttime crew realizes the enemy is in their midst, absconding with their prized prisoner. Keith senses the whole ship rousing under him, booted feet thudding over wooden planks and cries of confusion coalescing into angry, terrified calls to their battle posts.

He remains of a singular mind, though, rushing toward a stretch of unguarded railing as quickly as he can with Shiro’s weight draped over him. And at the very edge of the _Purification’s_ bounds, teetering on the brink of a long fall into a choppy sea, Keith winds his arms tight around Shiro, cinching himself to the unconscious man. Before an approaching Imperial marine can reach them with a frantic, sweeping slash of his sword, Keith tips himself and Shiro over the railing and off the side of the ship, plummeting into the ocean waiting below.

His back hits the water first, just as he’d hoped. Shiro’s weight bears him down deeper, the both of them briefly suspended under the waves, a rush of bubbles rising around them. Above, Keith hears the muffled crack of cannon shot and a flare of golden light as bright as sunrise. When he rises to the surface once more, his legs kicking frantically and his left arm wound tight around Shiro’s ribs, it is to an all-out barrage of cannonfire.

The _Purification’s_ bow is burning, those wood-carven flames now engulfed by ones that climb the ropes up to the foremast and lick red and gold all over the furled sails. Already, the Galran cannoneers are answering with a volley twice as strong, the number of their guns greatly outnumbering the _Sincline._ The surprise of the attack has left them wildly out of sorts, though, and the lack of a captain to guide them is a further disadvantage.

Several of the _Sincline’s_ incoming cannon shots land in the water just a few yards shy of Keith and Shiro, and Keith starts swimming with renewed vigor. It’s a struggle to keep his own chin above the swelling waves, their tips already turning white-capped from the wind; keeping Shiro’s head above water, too, is even trickier.

The sea and the sky are still blindingly dark, only punctuated by the flash of lightning or the glare of the flames devouring up the _Purification’s_ timbers. Once Keith orients himself amid the chaos, it is clear that his longboat has drifted from where he left it. He kicks his legs harder, striking out further from the bitterly embroiled Imperial cruiser.

As lightning crackles closer and closer, Keith finally catches a much-needed glimpse of the small boat in the distance, being tossed about on the rising waves. With his mouth filled with seawater and his limbs heavy as lead, he surges toward it, fighting through the wind and water that keep buffering him back. And when his hand at last reaches the edge of the longboat, gripping so tight that his nails sink into the painted wood, it takes all of Keith’s remaining strength to draw Shiro up and push him into the boat, first. Keith clings limply to the side of the longboat after, letting himself be pushed and pulled by the waves that rock against him; breathing hard, it takes him one, two, three, four attempts to heave himself up and out of the ocean, tumbling into the longboat and landing in a heap beside Shiro.

He blinks, staring up. A web of lightning crawls its way across the sky, briefly illuminating dark, roiling clouds that seem to stretch for miles, blotting out the crescent moon and all the stars. Pops of cannon fire ring distantly over the waves, sounding further away than Keith would’ve guessed. His cheek stings horribly with every breath. His body aches with exhaustion. He strains to lift his head, peering over the side of the longboat, and finds the flashes of burning light from the _Sincline’s_ cannon barrels are as small and fleeting as fireflies.

The waves have carried them well away from the warring ships, and Keith fumbles through the heavy canvas bag at the bottom of the longboat, shoving aside skins of water and linen bandages to find a signal flare. Relieved, he fumbles the accompanying flint half a dozen times before the fuse ignites, a plume of smoke bursting out as red sparks arc high and burn bright.

The signal seems to go unnoticed, the _Sincline_ either too distant to see it or too busy pummeling the _Purification_. and Keith slumps back in the longboat, at a loss for what else to do. To be left adrift in such a small boat on a storm-wracked night is likely doom, but fighting the waves to paddle closer to two warring ships is no safer.

The _Sincline_ and the _Purification_ keep circling each other, firing off brutal volleys even as they begin to pitch to and fro atop the windswept seas. Neither ship is willing to relent—neither _can,_ in all likelihood, without the other striking a mortal blow, as neither mercy nor quarter is ever given between Lotor and the Empire—and Keith can only watch as the rising waves soon block out his view and the howling wind deafens even the sound of the cannons.

The longboat rocks back and forth, tugged this way and that by the gathering storm. With one last look back toward their only hope of rescue, Keith grits his teeth and unrolls the heavy, oiled canvas belted to the longboat’s stern. He draws it over himself and Shiro for protection from the rain that will hit them at any moment, tying the cover down before the gusting winds can rip it away.

Within a minute, deafening sheets of rain pelt the canvas stretched above them, cold water dripping in along its edges. Wind rattles at their flimsy cover, fraying the material and loosening Keith’s hastily-tied knots. And, helpless to do anything else, Keith sinks down into the belly of the longboat beside Shiro and holds him close, hoping it will be enough.

* * *

At some point the bleak terror of being tossed about on treacherous, hungry waves gives way to exhaustion, and Keith passes out. By the time he wakes, the longboat is in calm waters and brilliant sunlight beats down on the white canvas still tied down above them.

Keith’s stomach plummets as everything from the night before comes racing back to the forefront of his mind: Shiro’s pitiful state in the brig, his utter lack of response, his being subjected to the same frigid waters as Keith. Terrified, Keith rushes to turn and check Shiro, letting out a held breath when he finds the man’s chest still rising, his pulse still racing in his veins. Then he sits up and starts untying the knots along the boat’s edges, loosening the cover that had sheltered them from the worst of the storm.

The sun looms high overhead, and not a cloud hangs in the sky. In every direction all around them is nothing but flat, shimmering sea.

And amid it all, Keith feels as battered as a tavern floor. Bruises run from his throat down to the soles of his bare feet. Cuts and scratches he had shaken off now sting with every movement. His cheek throbs, the slice Sendak had carved into him still sluggishly dripping with blood.

Keith closes his eyes, refusing to let the hopelessness of the situation make him crumble. Shiro still needs him—needs him to be strong—and he has heard tales of castaway sailors surviving worse.

He rummages in the satchel that accompanies the longboat, taking his time to sift through everything Lotor had seen fit to prepare him with. Inside, Keith finds one more flare and another piece of flint; two skins of water and wine; a sparse infirmary kit, complete with bandages, soap, laudanum, oil, and a few herbal tinctures; then linens, a compass, extra gunpowder, and a length of rope with a curved hook for grappling.

Keith kind of wishes he’d known about that last one sooner, although he’s not sure it would’ve made his efforts on the _Purification_ much easier.

After downing a few mouthfuls of water, he peels off his damp shirt and hangs it over the side of the boat to dry. Then, after some contemplation, Keith does the same for Shiro.

His fingers move with delicate purpose, working to unlace Shiro’s tattered, blood-stained shirt without touching his chest any more than he ought to. He gently slips it off of Shiro’s limp form, openly staring at the skin that is suddenly laid bare.

In the depth of the night and the rush of the rescue, Keith had never gotten a good look at Shiro, aside from confirming that none of his remaining limbs had gone missing and that his heart was still beating. Now, all he can _do_ is look.

There’s hardly an inch of him left untouched. Shiro’s sunburnt skin is crisscrossed with pale lines—places where the ropes must’ve laid as he was tied up and left to scorch under the unforgiving sun, Keith guesses. Bruises and welts ring his ribcage, lace his wrists, discolor his slightly swollen face. Drips of dried, flaking blood cling to his flanks; when Keith gently rolls him to one side, he finds an ugly, raw mess of lash marks across Shiro’s back. A few even stretch up over his shoulders and around to his chest, where the whip must’ve curled around and bit in deep.

And under all the myriad wounds freshly laid into Shiro, Keith finds one that is almost two years old. Familiar, too, if rarely seen—much less this close, for this long, without any worries of Shiro catching him staring. 

Gingerly, his fingertips trace the raised, discolored line embedded in Shiro’s shoulder, where his mother’s dagger once bit deep. Of all the marks that litter Shiro’s body, this one alone belongs to Keith. It came by his hand. It was violently born of their first meeting, inseparably linked to the occasion. And it reminds Keith of a time that now feels as distant as the faintest stars—when he had looked at this man and desired him dead, thinking Captain Shirogane even more of a scourge than the rest of his peers in the navy.

The memory hardly feels real sometimes. Less real than the seam of scar tissue under his fingers, anyway, and more like the moments in waking after a dream, when his every sense is vague and muddled. If Keith could meet himself at that time, in that moment… well, they’d brawl. That’s for certain.

Keith rests the back of his hand over Shiro’s forehead and finds him feverish. He doubts it’s from the heat alone—Sendak had complained about Shiro’s lack of resilience, and all Keith can think of is that terrible sickness that had nearly claimed Shiro months prior.

Carefully, he trickles a tiny bit of water into Shiro’s dry mouth, tipping his head to one side to make sure he doesn’t choke on a single drop. Then he arranges Shiro as comfortably as he can, sliding the bundled linens under Shiro’s head as a makeshift pillow.

Keith digs his fingers into the wound tincture and does his best to dab it over Shiro’s open wounds—the whip lashes, the jagged scrapes from being dragged along the wood of the deck, the bruised split down the center of his lip. Lastly, he fixes the canvas to make sure Shiro has shade while he rests.

And then, lost and alone in the vastness of the sea, he doesn’t know what else to do.

* * *

Pointless as it might be, Keith tries his best to navigate them toward a better chance of survival.

That had been what Shiro entrusted to him, hadn’t it? Naming Keith his sailing master, asking him to chart their course and steer the _Kerberos_ through it. The little longboat is pitiful by comparison, but Keith takes his duty no less seriously for it.

By day, he catches fish, eats them raw, and dozes next to Shiro, forever listening for the reedy rasp of his shallow breaths. By night, he picks up the oars and orients himself under the stars, pushing them in the direction surest to carry them back to one Coalition kingdom or another. Eventually. _Maybe._

And when his arms at last grow too bonelessly weary to keep rowing across the open sea, Keith clumsily lies down in the bottom of the boat alongside Shiro and stares up into the sky.

He wishes they could speak again, at least. All of this would be infinitely easier to endure if Shiro was present to gentle his spiraling thoughts with a word, or to laugh and make light of their plight, or to lay a hand on Keith’s shoulder and assure him that all would be well. Instead, there is only the constant lapping of gentle waves, the rush of air, and the faint movement of slumbering breath from where Shiro lays blanketed under Keith’s crimson jacket, his skin pale and his lips cracked.

Keith wants to plaster himself to Shiro’s side, to bury his face against that broad shoulder and sleep without worries. He wants to curl around Shiro like a shell, strong enough to protect him from even the elements. He wants to see Shiro’s eyes, a multitude of warmth behind the steeled grey of his irises, and his smile, too. He wants to hear Shiro’s voice again, at least once.

Most of all, he wants Shiro to know that he is not alone and never will be again.

* * *

A light rain scatters over them the next day, for which Keith is grateful. He stores away enough water to last them a few more days, hopefully, and the cloud cover gives them a welcome respite from the sun. He also takes the opportunity to tenderly wash Shiro’s bruise-mottled skin and blood-caked hair, which is already turning more white than black.

The day after, a withering sun greets them again. It’s almost oppressive enough to make Keith long for the frigid north, where he had sometimes woken with speckled ice in his hair and a light frost on his lips. Where he had watched Shiro stick his tongue to an icicle on a dare from Matt, laughing until he realized how firmly he was affixed to the ice. Where Keith had been invited to sit with Shiro on his bed, tucked against his side, and found himself wanting far more.

By their fifth day stranded at sea, Keith’s hope has waned gossamer thin.

It is entirely possible, he slowly and reluctantly realizes, that he drew Shiro out of Sendak’s clutches only to watch him die.

Once, not so long ago, Keith had promised to stand between Shiro and death at any cost. He had sworn to protect his captain’s life and boasted wildly of his own devotion. Now, he can only sit by Shiro’s side and ruminate on all the ways he has failed to uphold this simple promise. The only promise that matters, really—one made to the only _person_ who matters.

And underneath the vast tides of disappointment and self-loathing at work within himself, Keith feels a cavernous sense of regret.

 _Selfish_ regret, he thinks. A mourning for all that he feels for Shiro but had never spoken aloud, plainly; a longing for what could have been, on the infinitesimal chance that Shiro would have answered his love in kind.

Because Keith loves this man, and has for some time. Longer than he knew what to call it, unfamiliar as the feeling was. Long enough to know for certain even before he’d lost Shiro, at some point reluctantly aware that his loyalty went well beyond that of a sailor to his captain. A hundred fears big and small had kept him from ever giving voice to the truth of it, though.

Shiro occupies a social status several rungs above Keith, after all, and would not be blamed for giving him a swift, kind rejection. He is as beautifully carved as the classical statues that the gentry fawn over, and alive with a warmth that draws people to him like moths to the only flame for miles; Keith knows himself to be a wiry, stubborn weed, prone to choking out anything in his way. Shiro is clever and well-learned, while Keith still has to keep reference books handy to parse through the tomes from Shiro’s library. And then there’s all the risk that comes of a captain being caught in an illicit relationship with a subordinate.

Still… 

Still. All the things that had restrained Keith’s heart then feel petty and pitiful now, the both of them meandering toward death practically arm-in-arm.

Keith wishes he had been bold enough to confess himself to Shiro, ugly and messy as the aftermath might’ve been. He wishes he had kissed Shiro on one of the many occasions they were alone together in his cabin, huddled close together to read by the light of the same oil lamp. He wishes he’d abandoned all caution and pressed himself into Shiro while they sat on his bed; that he’d laid Shiro back on that mattress and chased away every inch of space between them, leaving no doubt as to how thoroughly he wants the man.

Maybe they could have run away together—Keith would like to think so. The navy deserves Shiro even less than Keith himself does, honestly, and Shiro’s family is no better. They could have sailed wherever they wanted, under their own flag. Maybe found some middle road between open piracy and stepping to the orders of the admiralty.

That’s what Keith thinks of as he lowers himself down beside a weakened, slumbering Shiro and closes his eyes. Even without sight, his hand finds Shiro’s cheek at once, cupping gently over it and cradling his captain’s head. He could say it now, he thinks, for whatever it might still be worth. And if Shiro hears it and wakes only to chide him for how they can never be, then all the better.

_I love you. I have loved you longer than I even knew. And I would sooner die with you than live without you._

The words sit perfectly formed on Keith’s tongue, born from his heart and felt in every atom of his being. But at the last moment, huddled so close to the brutalized body of the man he loves, he falters. His parched mouth withers even drier, while his eyes find some hidden reserves of water and well with bitter, stinging tears that Keith allows to fall as they may.

Holding back a sob that will only open the floodgates to more, he presses his nose into the coarse, disheveled strands of Shiro’s loose hair, missing the familiar smell of hinoki and the faintly floral oil Shiro sometimes rubbed through his locks. His lips brush the crest of one striking cheekbone, then graze higher; Keith kisses softly against Shiro’s temple, the satisfaction in the simple gesture outweighing the guilty little twist in the recesses of his heart.

He kisses Shiro again, along his brow. After, Keith tastes sweat and salt on his lips.

Gingerly, he presses close enough to the faint warmth of Shiro’s skin, tangling himself around the man as much as he dares. And then he hums.

It’s a grating, uneven sound at first, given how dry his throat and tongue are. Keith eventually finds the right pitch, though, and the tone gradually mellows into one that is almost sweet. In a drowsy stupor from the baking sun and the long days of deprivation, his hums turn to mumblings from songs and shanties he’s heard over the years, haphazardly stringing together whatever lines that come to mind. Crooning softly into Shiro’s ear, Keith finds it easier than giving voice to his own words.

“The heavy hours are almost past, that part my love and me. My longing eyes may hope at last, their only wish to see. Take those lips away that so sweetly were forsworn and those eyes the break of day, lights that do mislead the morn. But my kisses bring again, seals of love though sealed in vain.”

The longer he sings, the stronger his voice becomes; the lighter he feels, too, and not only for having gone days without a decent meal. Keith thinks of Shiro and anything that reminds him of the man—tavern songs, romantic poems he’d read through while exploring Shiro’s library, rhymes about how to read the stars and their constellations—and weaves it all together into a rambling, winding confession in verse. If Shiro hears any of it, though, he cannot tell.

“The nymph that undoes me is fair and kind, no less than a wonder by nature designed. He’s the grief of my heart, the joy of my eye, and the cause of a flame that can never die,” Keith sings into the tangled crown of Shiro’s hair, his voice slowing to a honeyed drawl as weariness creeps up on him again. He has no idea how much time has passed, but the sun isn’t perched quite as high in the sky and the current now carries them in a different direction. “The cause of a flame that can never die.”

Keith is halfway to nodding off when he hears the water around the boat swirl with a sudden, soft disturbance. It’s not at all like the passing movement of a fish or a curious shark, both of which he’s become quite familiar with. Neither is it the usual stirring of the tides.

A faint thrill of alarm sinks into Keith’s bones. He grabs his dagger, rips it from its sheath, and sits straight up. Poised to strike, his strong, sinewy arms raised and the blade gripped firmly in both hands, he stares wide-eyed into the water beside the boat.

There, peering up from the gentle waves, is a woman staring back at him just as intently.

Keith almost mistakes her for part of the sea, at first. Her translucent skin shifts like water, purplish pigment swirling up along her cheeks; her hair is richly dark like kelp, constantly billowing and swaying under the surface. Her eyes are even more striking—cool, violet irises backed by golden, faintly glowing sclera, like light catching in seafoam. She looks like she is made of the stuff of the depths and murky water itself, and it is as if she could dissolve into it again at any moment.

But it becomes clear that she is _very,_ truly solid as she reaches up and curls her slim fingers over the side of the boat’s hull, a set of long, claw-tipped nails sinking into the painted wood.

Keith tenses bowstring-taut, ready to drive his blade down into her wrist before she can threaten Shiro, when her voice stops him cold.

“My dagger,” she says, drawing herself closer to the longboat—closer to Keith, rising halfway up out of the water as she clings to its hull. Her voice is light and breathy with something like amazement. “You still carry it?” 

He bristles at the insinuation that lies behind the words, leaning protectively over Shiro and brandishing the blade. “This dagger belonged to my _mother,_ not—not _you—”_

“Keith,” she murmurs, patiently imploring even as Keith’s eyes grow wide and round at the familiar use of his name. With her expression so mournfully gentle, she looks less like some haunting sea wraith or a witch out of a sailor’s tale. “How you’ve grown.”

Keith’s lips part, surprise overtaking him. He looks sidelong at the dagger in his hand, its edge perpetually keen and the faint inscription along its hilt unreadable to him even after all of Shiro’s language lessons.

“This is yours?” Then, breathing raggedly as he stares at her and hunts for glimmers of himself, he says, “How could you be my mother? She—she died when I was still an infant. And she wasn’t…” 

A sea nymph? Some beautiful creature of the deep? Keith had not even one memory of her, truthfully, and his father had rarely ever spoken of the woman he’d loved after she’d gone.

“I heard your singing,” she responds, folding her hands along the edge of the boat’s rim and then resting her cheek atop them. “With that voice, you could only be the son of a siren.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stranded together on a lonely little island, Keith and Shiro have nothing but time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! And to Marlee, without whom this fic would not exist/would not be half as cool! Thank you for so many inspiring ideas and I hope you love the story <3  
> this chapter is a long boi (with a ratings change) please enjoi

A siren.

A siren? Even with the astounding proof of it staring him in the eye, Keith hunts for a means to argue. He glances down at the backs of his own trembling hands, assuring himself that he does indeed look nothing like her—no dark, rending claws nor watery sheen across purple-tinged skin. Nothing inhuman about him at all. Nothing.

“You really expect me to believe that you’re my mother?” Keith questions as he shrinks back against the far side of the boat, Shiro’s unconscious body cradled close. The dagger in his hands suddenly feels like far too little for what he faces. “Just because you knew my name? Because of my—because you heard me sing? Who are you, even?”

“Krolia,” she answers, the points of pearly fangs exposed as she speaks. There is a somber lilt to her lips as her gaze roves over Keith’s hardened expression, lingering noticeably on his viciously wounded cheek. “And I could tell you more, if you need to hear it. That your father bore a scar along his eyebrow, right here. That you were born during the Orionids. That it was your father who named you Keith, after a man who once saved his life.”

Keith’s eyes widen further still at such easily offered truths. His palms are clammy where they grip Shiro, his weak legs trembling as he tries to keep them as far as possible from this creature who knows him too well.

“There will be time for such conversations,” Krolia says, a watery hiss to the edges of her otherwise clear, bell-toned voice. “But first, we must find you somewhere more hospitable to rest.”

The siren—Krolia, Keith has to remind himself—tightens her grasp on the longboat, her claws pushing deep into the wood siding along its bow. Then she sinks out of sight, only her slender hand and arm visible, and begins to swim.

The boat is tugged along with her, Keith swaying as it suddenly lurches into speedy motion. He holds tighter to Shiro and scrambles backward to the stern, still clutching his dagger in hand. Too stunned to say anything more, he focuses on drawing deep enough breaths to stave off of the buzzing darkness encroaching around the periphery of his vision.

The long days at sea have done a number on him, truly. Keith knows his body is weak with hunger and fatigue, yes, but has it spread to his mind, too? Only some phantom born out of his memories would know of his long-dead father’s face or the valiant boatswain who became Keith’s namesake. Time and again, he digs his nails into his palms, his wrists, his cheeks, trying to rouse himself from whatever deathly fever dream has him in its grip—one in which sirens are real and his long-lost mother numbers among them. 

All the while, Krolia tirelessly swims and effortlessly tows their little longboat along. Keith lets his head loll against the side of the boat and stares into the water, heart thumping in his ears. The sea seems to smooth out before them, the very currents giving way before her; Keith finds it unsettlingly familiar, for the first time thinking he might understand the awe and perplexion Shiro so often affords his sailing.

In a matter of hours, they must cross leagues and leagues of empty, sprawling ocean. The bright blue of the sky above takes on its first licks of gold and glowing orange. And ahead, an island rises into view.

Keith sits up at once, his witheringly dry mouth parted in a relief so potent that it nearly devastates him. Land. He’d never thought he would be so moved to see it!

The island’s shores are a mix of jagged grey rocks that rise steeply out of the sea and pristine white beaches; its mountainous slopes are blanketed in the green growth of a semi-tropical forest. Birds mill and spin through the air above, their calls like music to Keith’s ears.

Under them, the tide surges. A wave builds out of nowhere, powerful enough to carry their longboat high up onto the sandy beach, gently running it aground. And then, just as quickly, the seawater foams and ebbs, leaving just them and Krolia resting on wet sand.

“This island should be rife with places to take shelter,” Krolia tells him, her words thin and strained. One by one, she pulls her claws free of the boat’s wooden planks and flexes her fingers. “I can tell you are strong. Make yourself a fire and find water, and you will be fine.”

Keith stares at her, trailing the tip of his thumb along the dagger’s grip all the while. Krolia may have ferried them here, sparing them a slow death at sea, but Keith knows nothing of her intentions. Her aid is as baffling as her existence, and if Keith has learned anything of sirens in his young life at sea, it is that they are best known for luring sailors to their doom.

Even if he is her son, and even if Krolia does hold some shred of care for him after the better part of two decades apart… well, any mercy extended to Keith might not be so generously bestowed upon Shiro, who is entirely mortal and all too close to death as it is.

“I know I’ll be fine,” he murmurs with a sidelong look at Krolia, who still lingers too close for his liking.

There is little to do about it, though. Keith’s limbs are leaden and quick to tremble at the slightest strain, while Shiro lies unconscious and utterly vulnerable. There is no quick escape, here. He would be lucky if he could even fight her off, were she to turn those rending claws and sharp fangs onto them.

Or her song. Keith dares not think of what that would do to them, for surely Shiro cannot withstand much more hardship. He trails the backs of his fingers along Shiro’s sunken cheek and then holds his hand to those split, bleeding lips, feeling the worryingly delicate puffs of his shallow breathing.

Shiro has been like this for at least a week. Longer, probably, given that Sendak’s cruelties had delivered him to this state well before Keith found him. That he has stubbornly survived this long is a miracle of the highest order, and Keith is terrified that their luck will run dry at any moment.

Krolia’s eerie gaze drifts down to the unconscious man cradled in Keith’s arms, quietly observing as Keith gingerly adjusts his remaining arm and tenderly touches his back. Her head tilts. Her strangely lit eyes squint. And for a moment she raises a hand, as if to reach out to him—perhaps to help, or perhaps to strike. 

Keith takes no chances. A warning glint from the dagger in his hand gives her pause, and for a long moment, he holds her stare with a look of utter murderousness. If she is offended by his unspoken threat, she doesn’t show it. Rather, the corners of Krolia’s mouth curl into the barest smile and her sharp, inhuman features gentle.

“Keep singing to him,” she advises, her clawed fingers curling as she withdraws her hand. “If you wish to see him live.”

“Of course I want him to live!” Keith snaps back, his temper and patience both threadbare. His anger burns hot, like a spark, and then fades into weariness. His fingers curl into the crimson coat draped around Shiro’s shoulders, squeezing him as tightly as he dares. “Just begone already.”

Krolia’s expression doesn’t even flicker at his outburst. Keith barely takes notice, though, his gaze instead cast down on Shiro’s slack, sweat-sheened features, worry overrunning his every other thought.

While he gathers Shiro’s limp form into his arms and tests the strength left in his limbs, Krolia slowly retreats toward the sea, crawling her way down to the frothing waves rolling onto shore. Her movements are anything but fluid and elegant here, away from the deep waters from whence she’d first emerged—like an octopus caught on dry land, she drags and slinks her way over the wet sand, only regaining her composure once she is surrounded by the lapping waves of the incoming tide.

And Keith finds some measure of relief in that. Krolia may have ways of commanding the sea itself, but it seems she cannot stray far from the ocean without it taking a heavy toll.

Where she sits in the surf, the sunset highlighting her glossy wet skin in pinks and golds, Krolia seems just as aware of the divide—resigned to it, her stare trailing after Keith as her fingers curl down into loose sand.

“I will be here again tomorrow,” she calls out as Keith staggers to his feet with Shiro draped in his arms, summoning reserves of strength he had not known he had.

The way she says it leaves something unspoken hanging in the air. If you care to find me again. If you need me. If you should not fear me so much.

Keith pauses just a step from the longboat, held by some thread of want that he can barely justify, let alone understand. It would be easier to turn from Krolia and never see her again, the way she had apparently turned from him. Easier to pretend that nothing she had said struck home, too steeped in reality to dismiss. Easier to ignore the possibility that he might truly be less than human, every bit the monster that his harshest critics had named him.

Keith draws a shaky breath as he turns from the sea, arms straining under the weight of even a half-starved Shiro. And then he looks back.

“Alright,” he acknowledges, his voice almost too soft to reach Krolia. He nods at her, once, and then turns to leave.

* * *

Keith takes refuge in the first passable shelter he finds—a cave, dry and shallow, with trickling waterfalls coursing down the mossy cliff face it occupies.

Darkness is already falling as he cuts down palm fronds and rushes to spread over the cavern’s stony floor, making some cushion for Shiro to lie upon. In cupped hands, Keith gathers fresh water to slake his own thirst, to wet Shiro’s lips, and to wash his festering wounds clean once more. And then, left with little else to try, Keith starts to sing.

Maybe Krolia’s words hold some truth. And if there is something unnatural in his blood, then maybe some good can come of it, at least.

He sings whatever refrains come to him. Anything that sounds right. Anything he knows Shiro likes. And all the while, he strokes along the matted tangles of Shiro’s hair, dismayed by how much of the white is stained with washed-out pinks and rusty reds.

Around dawn, Keith finally slumps into slumber alongside Shiro, atop the same bed of rushes and palm fronds, with his crimson jacket laid over the other man as a blanket. At sunset, he wakes again to feed Shiro a few handfuls of water and starts singing to him anew.

And by the next sunrise, Keith notices some color in Shiro’s hollowed cheeks. He blinks, rubs his eyes, and crawls closer to make sure.

Impossibly, fantastically, Shiro does look less sallow than he had just yesterday. His breathing is deeper, stronger, and more even. His skin doesn’t feel like it’s aflame with fever, and even the blistered, peeling sunburn seems to have faded.

Perhaps Shiro, perpetual fighter that he is, only needed water and better rest to turn a corner. Or perhaps Krolia’s enigmatic advice was worth heeding. Perhaps both.

Regardless, it hasn’t worked all miracles. When Keith gingerly checks Shiro’s back, he finds the lashmarks are still carved deep, although they look less angry and raw. They still look and smell like some infection has settled in, though, which makes worry rise like bile in the back of Keith’s throat. The wounds must be a source of constant agony, Keith thinks, and he wonders if maybe it is a mercy that Shiro has slept through so much.

And while Shiro continues to rest and heal, the task of properly caring for him consumes a very willing Keith. He had vowed to stay by Shiro’s side and stave off death itself, after all. He labors to the fullest, relieved to at last feel as though he can actually do some good.

With Shiro looking a sight better than he’s been since Keith found him, he chances the risk of leaving him alone for an hour or so. If they mean to survive here, he needs to find food and build a more livable shelter. And if they mean to one day leave—and to survive the trip—that little longboat from the Sincline might be their only hope.

With that in mind, Keith slowly picks his way back down to the beach they’d arrived upon, feeling winded by the short journey. There are still supplies nestled in the belly of the boat—flint, ointments, rope, a flare, and his fine gloves that are now likely ruined with sun and seawater. Canvas, too, which Keith hopes to retrieve and fashion into some good cover for when it inevitably rains.

As the forest gives way to open sand, the roll of the sea and the calls of its birds growing louder, Keith startles to find Krolia sitting there on the shore, waiting.

His steps waver and then stall, his hand habitually settling on his sheathed dagger. He hadn’t expected—well, he didn’t believe she would really come back. Not the next day, as she had said. And certainly not two days after that, even after Keith failed to show himself.

Krolia, for her part, surveys him with a calm that borders on impassive. Kneeling there among the rolling surf, she looks like some figment conjured out of seafoam and surface tension. It is nigh impossible to tell exactly where she ends and the sea begins, or if that distinction is ever truly constant.

“You returned,” she greets, her lovely, almost predatory features brightening. “How does he fare?”

Keith chews the inside of his cheek for a moment, torn between his wariness of this unknown siren and his gnawing curiosity to know more, if only for Shiro’s sake. He just doesn’t know how to speak to a mother he has never met nor barely heard of—a mother who isn’t even human, and who thus marks him as something inhuman, too.

That she seems to have concern for Shiro’s fate is… reassuring, though. Marginally.

“Better. Much better,” he begrudgingly admits, stepping in closer to the longboat. Some ten feet separate it from the reach of the lapping tides; he guesses Krolia’s reach cannot extend much further than that. Quietly, he asks, “Do you really think my singing helped him?”

“By the look of that man when you first came ashore, you might have been the only thread still tethering him here,” she says, her mouth curving into a faint smile. “If your song can sway that mortal’s soul to stay on this side of the Styx, then coaxing his body to heal ought to be no more difficult.”

Keith has no words to answer that astounding supposition, although his heart quickens at the hope that he can do for Shiro what he had so ardently promised. He idles there in the sand for a moment, his toes curling into the dry grains under his feet, and flusters under Krolia’s quiet scrutiny.

“I thought sirens’ songs were for luring sailors to their deaths,” he eventually says, scarcely tearing his eyes from Krolia even as he kneels beside the longboat and starts rifling for anything of use. “Not for nursing them back to health.”

Krolia’s lips part in an open-mouthed inhale, her wet hair shimmering like silk. Though she makes no move to draw closer, the way she leans forward and buries her hands into the foamy sand suggests that she would like to. “Our voices are far more commonly used to that end, yes—humans have a regrettable habit of sailing into waters they are not meant to wander. But that is not the extent of what you can do, or I.”

Distracted from the task at hand, Keith finds himself feeling along the curves of his upper ears, assuring himself that they bear no resemblance to Krolia’s long, pointed tips. His canines might be a little sharper than others’, and a smidge longer, but they’re not fangs. But for all the outward ways that he appears as human as his father, Keith cannot shake loose the worming, bewildering feeling that everything Krolia has said is true.

“I have no idea what it is that I can do. Or what I am doing, even,” Keith huffs, jaw squeezing tight as he resumes hastily unloading the longboat. “I haven’t done anything but parrot old tavern songs and shanties. I don’t know any ancient siren songs or magic words. I don’t even have a nice voice.” 

Krolia closes her eyes and smiles to herself, her head giving the barest shake. “I think every mortal walking this earth would disagree. You sing beautifully, Keith. Passionately,” she says, a warm note of pride slipping into her praise. “And your intentions matter more than the words you choose. The stronger you feel it in your heart, the more powerful your song will be. And your feelings must run deep.”

Warmth crawls up the back of Keith’s neck and itches under his skin. He’d been lost in thoughts of Shiro when Krolia first heard and sought him out, unaware that anyone or anything might be listening to his private, mournful lament. And while he cannot quite bring himself to hold it against her, he is far from thrilled that she’d come across him in such a vulnerable state.

“How many other half-sirens are out there?” he wonders out loud as he bundles up the supplies within the canvas, cinching it into a tight bundle to carry back—anything to turn the tide of the conversation from his feelings and how nice his singing is.

“None other, as far as I am aware,” Krolia answers. “Unions like mine and your father’s are exceedingly rare.”

It doesn’t surprise Keith terribly. And it does make sense to him, in some all too fitting way, that his very birth would leave him out of step with the whole of humankind. Little wonder that the other children his age had found reason to avoid him! Others must have been quicker to sense what he had been blind to—that he never did really belong, not fully, and never would. 

“Just me, then,” Keith murmurs as he picks up the tightly folded canvas under his arm and stands, suddenly feeling the weight of a secret he knows he will have to bear all the rest of his life. “Alright.”

“Keith. Wait. I brought something for you to eat,” Krolia calls out, already dragging a stuffed net out of the shallow surf. From a distance, Keith can see it teeming with movement. “You still look as though you have barely eaten.”

“I haven’t,” Keith confirms, and neither has Shiro. He takes an uncertain step forward, a little dizzy just from the mention of something to eat after so long spent subsisting on water and slim pickings. Another step closer and he realizes the netting is filled with crabs, scallops, writhing eels, and bunches of purple and green seaweed.

His stomach gives a plaintive whine. Keith sighs and trudges closer, until the sand under his feet is cool and wet.

“You need not come any closer,” Krolia tells him, holding up a slender hand.

While Keith watches, she lifts the heavy bundle of seafood and lets an errant wave buoy it out of her grip. As if guided along on a string, it bobs its way directly to Keith, a surge of water depositing the seaweed and shellfish right at his feet.

He glances up, his eyebrows arched high. “How did you do that? That’s—”

Krolia smiles, her sharp teeth tucked away behind the slightly sly curve of her lips. “A parlor trick, as your father would have called it,” she splashes against the water pooled around her hips and sends the current swirling, a tiny whirlpool weaving its way along the shallow roll of the tide before it disperses in front of Keith. “My bloodline—your bloodline—shares an exceptionally close bond with the sea. I would not be surprised if you inherited some similar gifts.”

“I… I have been called unnaturally lucky when it comes to sailing,” Keith says, thinking of Shiro’s starry-eyed journaling about him as he scratches his stinging, itching cheek. He inches closer, until his toes brush the writhing net of seafood and waves lick hungrily around his ankles. “Knowing how to pass through reefs. Being able to find ships. Or avoid them, sometimes. Is that what you mean?”

Krolia’s smile splits into a grin, bearing pearl-white teeth and pointed fangs. “That is part of it, yes. Master that connection well enough and you can will whirlpools into existence,” she tells him. “Or out of it.”

Keith’s eyebrows rise even higher of their own volition. Everything Krolia says sounds too impossible to believe—but here she is, a siren, sitting before him in flesh and seafoam. How long can he cling to doubt after encountering a being straight out of ancient myth?

“You know, that really would’ve proved useful about a week ago,” Keith dryly mumbles.

“I can only imagine,” Krolia says, her head tilting as she looks up at Keith and the halfway-healed slice up his cheek. Then her chin dips down again, her hands dipping down into the rushing seawater. “I have more to give you, too, before you go.”

Keith follows the distorted shape of her hands under the water, alarm trilling through his tensed muscles—until he notices what lies in the surf beside Krolia, gently pushes back and forth by the passing waves. Arrayed around her are cloudy seaglass bottles, tightly bundled rolls of kelp, and glittering shells unlike any he has ever seen.

“What is all that?” he asks, squinting at the shifting colors under the surface.

“These are cures for your human lover, drawn from the deepest and most unknown reaches of the sea,” she says, turning to pluck a few out of the water whilst Keith feels every ounce of breath evacuate his chest, leaving his lungs to curl and shrivel out of shock. In ones and twos, Krolia sets her gifts adrift, the current once again ferrying them toward Keith.

“He—no, no, he’s not my—Shiro is my captain,” Keith manages to say through the burning flush that engulfs him from head to toe, half worried that the water lapping at his ankles will start to steam, “and my dearest friend. That is… that is where things stand.”

Krolia turns and stares at him for several long moments, her expression inscrutable. “I see…”

Her flatly disbelieving look is anything but comforting. Keith curls his lips inward, almost wishing he hadn’t said anything at all.

“Regardless,” Krolia continues, once again in motion, “you may use these to help him heal faster. And yourself, too,” she adds, looking pointedly to the poorly tended slash across his cheek.

It takes a few seconds for Keith to lurch back into motion after being so taken off-guard. That Krolia would go out of her way to bring them food and aid makes Keith want to trust her. He wants her cures to work, to help Shiro recover, to bring him back to himself as soon as possible. Keith wades further out, stepping around the net of seafood—close enough that Krolia could grab him by the ankle and drag him out to sea, if she were so inclined—and bends at the waist to pluck up the shells and jars bobbing patiently toward him.

“What do I do with them?”

“Apply these mixtures to his wounds, in this order,” Krolia says, pointing out the bottles to him by the hazy, clouded colors of their glass, “and then bind his wounds with this kelp before you sing to him again.”

“And these snails?” Keith asks, squinting as he peers into one of the spiraled, gold-flecked shells. There is some slug-like creature nestled inside, gooey and golden and translucent in a way that reminds him of honey.

“You eat them.”

“Oh.” He frowns and starts filling his pockets with snail shells and wads of wet kelp, long past the point of caring if his clothes soak through. “And how do you know these things will work safely on him? A human, I mean.”

Krolia’s smile softens down to a small, slight lift of the corners of her mouth. As she looks upon Keith, the corners of her eyes crease and the set of her slim brows eases. “They worked well enough for your father.”

* * *

Keith trudges back to the cave with his arms laden, weary and hungry as he sets about starting a proper fire. Once his stomach is filled with crab and fresh, springy seaweed, he fishes out the deep-sea cures Krolia gave him, testing each one on his own cheek before delicately dabbing them over every scrape and laceration still carved deep into Shiro’s flesh.

He blankets Shiro in the strange, purplish kelp and then covers his sleeping form with the too-small jacket. And, careful to leave a bit of space between them, Keith lies down beside Shiro and sings until his tongue grows tired and slumber takes him, too.

By the next morning, he cannot deny the results.

There is a soft, rejuvenated glow to Shiro. His skin is warmed through with life, all the burns eased away to reveal skin that is sun-kissed and golden and vibrant, a slate wiped clean of its many ugly bruises and carelessly-given cuts. His rest is peaceful. Without the pained creases that had etched themselves into his expression, he looks like a spring youth without all the cares of his commission weighing upon him night and day. Even the wicked gashes across Shiro’s back have finished mending themselves, the scars faded down to smooth, slightly off-color flesh overnight. 

Satisfied that Shiro is well-healed, Keith touches his fingers to his own cheek, feeling for the gouge that has been radiating pain up and down his jaw for a week. It… doesn’t sting at the slightest touch, which is an improvement. He has no mirror by which to check his own appearance, but he can form a mental picture as he traces the span of it. There is still a noticeable divot where Sendak’s sword had caught him, and his skin feels raw at its edges; his healing isn’t as drastic as Shiro’s, it seems, but Keith can live with that. He is pleased enough to have softened the severity of the wound before Shiro wakes to see it.

If he wakes.

Keith trusts he will, though. Sooner rather than later, he hopes.

With a hand folded around Shiro’s, Keith sings to him once more. His recent conversation with Krolia sits at the forefront of his mind, and he makes a conscious, willful effort to draw Shiro back to him—to beckon him forth out of whatever distant dream has gripped his mind while his body clung to life by fraying threads. It is the work of hours, leaving Keith’s throat raw and scratchy for lack of rest. He weaves his intentions into words spoken from fond memory and notes drawn from the heart, and eventually Shiro’s breathing shifts, his placid expression pinches with sleepy confusion, and his eyes blink open.

Keith has never been so moved to see that familiar burnished grey.

Shiro’s voice is as rasped and grating as sand over dry wood as he murmurs out a weak, “Keith?”

“Shiro?” Keith squeezes tight around Shiro’s hand without thinking, his every muscle spasming tight in wondrous surprise. Then he lets go, trading his rigid grip on Shiro’s hand to cup his face, to smooth over his hair, to grasp at his shoulders, worrying over every inch of him. “Shiro! You’re—you’re awake! You woke up. How are you? Are you in pain? Does it hurt here? Do you need—”

“I’m guessing I was out longer than the last time,” Shiro interrupts, his head lolling weakly in Keith’s direction. It is labored and faint, but he tries for a smile.

“I—yeah. Yes. You were,” Keith says, sniffing and wiping at his nose as he fights back a small waterfall of ugly, grateful tears. “Much longer and much worse for wear. I was afraid, Shiro. Deathly afraid. For you.” 

“Mn,” Shiro acknowledges, his eyes slipping shut. It takes a few moments for him to muster the strength to open them again, his stare wandering before it finds Keith once more. “The last thing I remember is being bound to the main mast of the Purification for a few days,” he says, something flickering in the depths of his eyes as he searches Keith’s gaunt, scarred face. “I don’t imagine Sendak simply handed me over to you.”

“No,” Keith tells Shiro, stroking over the matted tangle of Shiro’s hair. It’s more for his own comfort than Shiro’s, at this point. “He’s dead. By my hand.”

“Dead?” Shiro echoes, blinking slowly. His dry lips part, then purse, and then open again. “How did you even find me, Keith? Much less save me?” 

“Sheer stubbornness. I told you once before that I’d protect you, didn’t I?” Keith says, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I had to make good on my word. And it didn’t hurt that I had some assistance, particularly from Allura. I don’t know about the state of the Purification itself, unfortunately, but hopefully Lotor left it broken at the bottom of the sea.”

“Lotor, eh?” Shiro shifts slightly where he lies, like he’s testing his own body after so long without use. “That’s interesting.”

Keith grunts and settles back down on his folded legs, quietly watching as Shiro flexes his hand, curls his toes, and works his jaw loose. Shiro seems to take stock of himself a little bit at a time, continually surprised at how little pain lances through him with each movement; he works his hand under his lower back, feeling for the worst of the injuries he can recall, and his eyes blink open wide when he finds his flesh whole and healed.

“Keith… just how long was I asleep?”

“Ah. Well, you were unconscious when I first found you, which was around a week ago. I have no idea how long you were out before that,” Keith glumly acknowledges. Only Shiro would know what had transpired about the Purification at that time, but whatever torture he’d been put through might well have robbed him of his memory of it. A flare of anger takes hold in the pit of Keith’s stomach, like a dormant sea serpent uncoiling, and there is a tremble in his voice as he asks, “What did he do to you, Shiro?

As soon as the words leave his lips, Keith regrets them.

A flicker of anguish crosses Shiro’s features, too reflexive to be squashed out. Then he swallows, smiles, and offers, “That doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

No. No, it doesn’t, Keith supposes. The damage is done and the perpetrator punished, and Shiro deserves to spend the rest of his life without sparing a second thought for Sendak and his ilk.

“I will say,” Shiro adds after a moment, wincing through his smile, “that keelhauling is exactly as awful as it appears.”

Keith’s hands tremble, itching to soothe Shiro as much as they yearn to find Sendak’s pierced throat and strangle the life out of him again. If he were still the Red Shrike—and if Sendak hadn’t already fallen under his blade—Keith would make it his business to drag Sendak behind the Songbird at twenty knots, day and night, until the abrasive salt water and hungry sea creatures had picked him apart.

As things are, Keith can only take Shiro’s hand between his own and murmur, “You ought never have had to endure that. None of it. But you’re strong, Shiro, to have done so. To have fought for so long, so fiercely.”

Shiro gives a faint, gently disbelieving hum. “I cannot say I feel particularly strong at the moment.”

“Are you hungry?” Keith asks, shuffling closer. He grabs one of the eels he had skewered and smoked above the fire, offering it to Shiro. “I have some sea snails for you, too. Or do you need more water, first?”

“Eel first, water second, sea snails third,” Shiro quickly decides, cracking a small grin as Keith breaks off chunks of pale, delicate flesh and hand feeds him without a second thought. It’s a woefully light meal to start, but that is for the best—gaunt as he is, Shiro likely can’t stomach too much at once. 

Water comes next, spilling around the corners of Shiro’s mouth as Keith helps hold a water skin to his lips. Once Shiro feels up to it, Keith helps pull him up into a sitting position, one hand braced gently at the small of Shiro’s back.

Shiro eats a little more, drinks a little more, and questions Keith left and right: Where are we? An island? Did you swim us here? Oh, you rowed? What latitude would you say we’re at? Does it seem like any ships have passed close by? Have you been taking care of yourself, too? Keith, you look like you’ve been run ragged.

And as Shiro starts worrying and fretting over him in turn—his scarred cheek, his disheveled appearance, the dark circles under his eyes—Keith sighs through his open, relieved smile and savors the sound of Shiro’s voice.

* * *

Krolia brings more gifts from the depths the next day: squid and urchins and rich, fatty fish to supplement the wild fruit Keith forages on the island; a chest pulled from some wreck god-knows-where, filled with relatively untouched clothing that smells of sea salt and cedarwood; and an artfully-carved whale bone comb inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

Keith alights on the comb at once, eager to put it to good use.

He tells Shiro that he found the chest washed up on shore, miraculously intact. While Shiro happily marvels at their good luck and sifts through its contents, Keith quietly gnaws the inside of his cheek. It doesn’t feel good to lie to the one person who has always tried to do right by him, but he knows it will feel worse to broach the truth. Shiro will have questions—many of them, all deserving an answer—and Keith isn’t ready to face them.

How is he even to go about admitting that he is only half human? That his mother has fangs and wicked claws and watery flesh? That spellcraft comes so naturally to him that he never knew he had it? Men have been hanged for lesser suspicions of sorcery, assumed cursedness, and the sheer misfortune of being markedly different.

Keith puts all thought of his siren blood out of his mind, unwilling to further weigh what it might mean for Shiro’s view of him.

They share a meal, picking fine bones out of whole roasted fish, and then spend a number of hours shoring up the canvas that stretches over the entrance of the cave.

With their shelter better braced against the rough winds that suggest an oncoming storm, they settle together in front of a low-burning fire for the evening, with Keith perched on the chest Krolia brought him and Shiro sitting cross-legged right before him.

Keith takes the carven comb to Shiro’s tangled hair, diligently working through each knot from the bottom-up. After, he rubs his hands with a few precious drops of the oil that came with the longboat’s supplies and runs them through those coarse strands, restoring more of their usual shine. And if he lingers on the task a few minutes more than is absolutely necessary, neither of them have any complaint.

Shiro’s hair is so much paler than Keith remembers it being even a month ago. Just a few thick streaks of midnight black are left, stark and striking where they cut through the silvery-white that crowns the rest of Shiro’s head. Silvery-white like moonlight reflected on still water, or the seafoam that crests whitecaps in choppy winds. A color that makes him look as ethereal as any siren—so alluring that Keith would unquestionably chase him down to the deepest, darkest reaches of the ocean if he had to.

“Mn. Thank you, Keith.” Shiro sighs, rubbing at the scruff grown in along his jaw, and idly complains, “Wish I could shave, too.”

“It doesn’t look bad on you,” Keith tells him, but offers right after: “You can borrow my dagger, though, if you’d like. It’s plenty sharp.”

Shiro half-turns, looking back over his shoulder at Keith, and gives him a rueful smile. “That dagger?” he asks, gaze flitting down to the wickedly honed blade at Keith’s hip. “Without a mirror? Keith, I already have one very prominent facial scar. Surely two would be a bit much?”

The last word ends slightly clipped. Shiro quietly sucks in air between his teeth as his eyes dart to the fresh scar laid into Keith’s cheek, then away, like he’s worried of making light of something that now afflicts Keith, too.

For his part, Keith just smiles.

“Then I’ll do it for you,” he says while tying back Shiro’s neatly combed hair with a strip of cloth cut from his own crimson jacket. The red looks good against Shiro’s black-and-white hair. Better still, it feels like Shiro is wearing a little memento of him. “If you trust me with a blade so close to your throat, that is,” he teases.

Shiro twists a little more where he sits in front of Keith. Under the fading light of sunset and the flickering of the dying firelight, his expression takes on an even softer warmth. “Of course I trust you, Keith.”

With buzzing sparks astir in the pit of Keith’s belly, he warms some water over the fire, works the soap into a lather between his hands, and then oh-so-carefully takes the edge of his dagger to Shiro’s skin.

His every movement he makes is painstakingly delicate, unwilling to give Shiro even one scrape or bloody nick. Each short stroke clears away a little of the lather and the sparse, dark hair grown in around Shiro’s mouth, along his chin, down from those usually-neat sideburns. Keith takes his sweet time, the pads of his fingers light on Shiro’s jaw as he turns his head this way and that. Inwardly, he marvels at how unquestioningly Shiro does trust him—enough to lean back into the open splay of Keith’s legs, the back of his head cushioned against one lean thigh, his eyes closed while his bowed neck lays bare.

But that’s always been the case, hasn’t it? Hasn’t Shiro always held more faith in him than anyone else? Hasn’t he always thought higher of him, expected more of him, and wanted more for him?

As the razor edge of the dagger glides up the strong, handsome curve of Shiro’s exposed throat, Shiro swallows; Keith watches the gentle bob of his Adam’s apple, entranced by the movement. He thinks of trading the blade for his own hand, running a thumb up along the column of Shiro’s windpipe and feeling him swallow. He thinks of pressing his lips there, testing the smoothness of Shiro’s freshly shaven skin under his tongue.

And then Keith exhales, adjusts his grip, and sets his mind firmly on the task of shaving the underside of Shiro’s sharp, square-cut jaw.

Keith has never understood where Shiro’s willingness to believe in him spawned from in the first place. He certainly didn’t deserve it back then, as a cutthroat pirate who’d have just as soon sunk the Calypso and Shiro with her; as a terror on the seas, sending men much like his own father to early deaths for the ill-fate of crossing his path.

Maybe that was his siren blood at work, he muses, long before he’d even known of it. He chased rather than lured, but the result was the same: drowned sailors, sunken ships, and his own little legend as a foreboding, bloodthirsty creature. In hindsight, it seems that he had always taken after Krolia, despite his human looks.

And as he washes his dagger clean and helps dab Shiro’s face dry, Keith can’t help but wonder if Shiro’s trust in him would falter if he knew that the man he’d taken in was not even fully human, born out of a lineage best known for bringing ships to wreck. Would he, like Keith, reflect on all his past actions and see them in a new light?

What would Shiro think if he saw Krolia slithering through the surf with a haul of squid and writhing eels in tow, her long claws raking through the sand and her pearled fangs bared? And what would he think if he knew the same blood ran in Keith? If he realized that Keith might possess the same bewitching powers of his siren mother?

What if he suspected Keith of using them?

… What if he had?

He turns away from Shiro and squats to stoke the embers of the fire, frowning. Unbeknownst to himself or anyone else, Keith had spent all his life at sea quietly making use of gifts that apparently came from Krolia’s bloodline: the gut feelings he had about currents; whether storms were billowing beyond sight; the unspoken sense of where pitfalls and reefs and deep harbors lay; the way any ship could move faster under his hand, could be more nimbly maneuvered. Things he shouldn’t and couldn’t have managed, if he were only human.

And then there’s the singing.

Keith swallows thickly as he starts slicing apart one of the small sea creatures that he’d left strung over the fire to dry and smoke, fixing himself and Shiro a supper of squid, freshly foraged seaweed, and some boiled, cassava-like roots he’d found. And while his hands move, his thoughts start to race round and round themselves, dredging up worries like silt at the bottom of the sea.

How many evenings had he sung for Shiro, behind closed doors? Dozens and dozens, at least. He’d thought it safe because Shiro never reacted the way others had—dazedly vacant or hungrily leering, quick to forget themselves and reach out for him with unsettling interest—but that doesn’t mean his voice had no effect. If his singing is as powerful as Krolia thinks, couldn’t it influence Shiro with ease, unbeknownst to either of them? If Keith can heal Shiro with his voice, could he not hurt him as well? Cast some kind of spell over him? Exert his will and bend Shiro to it?

The realization plunges Keith into doubt, the sensation more chilling than a steep drop into arctic waters.

He has heard enough stories to know that sirens are meant to be alluring, captivating things. The notion doesn’t seem to fit him in appearance—he lacks his mothers strange, ethereal beauty, certainly, along with her talons and pointed ears—but perhaps it bleeds through in whatever music he makes, or other things yet unseen and unrealized. Perhaps his father was made immune by the blood he shares with Keith, but Shiro… 

There is nothing to protect Shiro from whatever strange means of manipulation Keith has. From whatever oddity he is.

Maybe that explains the frankly inexplicable goodwill Shiro has shown him from the start, so captivated that he risked his own life to convince Keith not to throw away his; it would make far more sense than Keith winning a navy captain’s confidence on his own, if he’s being honest. And when he’d sung for Shiro—with love in his heart, whether he had recognized it yet or not—how easy it would’ve been to let his own wants impose themselves on his unsuspecting friend.

Shiro is too kind-hearted, really, and too willing to extend his trust, and Keith has always thought those traits as unwise as they are endearing. When he first threw caution to the wind and sang for his captain, he was delighted that Shiro didn’t change into some glassy-eyed, unsettling version of himself; at that moment, Keith fancied that Shiro was different, that Shiro was special, that Shiro alone could hold at bay whatever caused others to react so troublingly to his voice.

Now, he has good reason to consider otherwise. Maybe it isn’t that Shiro was strong enough to resist whatever siren charms Keith has in spades, but that he was more susceptible to them from the very start. Perhaps Shiro only looks at him as softly as he does, with as much unflinching trust as he does, because Keith’s influential nature has left him with little choice in the matter.

“I can practically hear you thinking over there,” Shiro says, interrupting Keith’s spiraling, worsening thoughts from the other side of the fire, pouring fresh water into their cups. He comes and settles near Keith, puts down their drinks, and takes a soft cube of the root vegetable from the wooden plank in Keith’s hands. “What is that scowl for? I thought you liked squid.”

“I do. I do,” Keith murmurs, stuffing a few rings of it into his mouth and chewing to buy himself time to muster some convincing words. “Just… thinking about how we’ll ever get off of this island. If we can get off. And how long we can survive in the interim.”

“Ah.” Shiro rubs along the slightly reddened skin of his smooth, freshly-shaven jaw. “Well, we will cross that bridge in time. Or perhaps some ship will moor itself nearby to resupply their water. Hopefully a Coalition ship,” he adds, his eyebrows giving a little rise, “as I am currently lacking a sword or a pistol.”

Keith hums in absent agreement, eating away at their supper plate while staring into the low-burning fire.

“And you have already done a marvelous job of setting us up here, Keith,” Shiro continues, leaning his head forward and purposefully edging into Keith’s unfocused frame of view. “The shelter. The bed. Even this fresh clothing. And the food, goodness. I can scarcely fathom how you have found the time to forage and catch and prepare so much. I would not be able to feed myself half as well, if I were stranded here alone.”

“It’s nothing,” Keith says, shooting Shiro a furtive glance as he shrugs one shoulder. In truth, it’s Krolia who has made light work of feeding himself and Shiro, always dragging some bounty from the sea along with her—not that Shiro can know that.

“It is far from nothing,” Shiro argues, resting his arm atop his bent knees. “You have saved my life many times over, Keith, but this time… this time you went to ridiculous, awe-inspiring lengths to do it. And here you are doing it again by keeping me alive and well, even on a deserted island in the middle of god-knows-where.”

Keith’s chest jerks with a dry, half-humored scoff. “Quite the predicament.”

Shiro smiles, and for now his mild expression doesn’t share a lick of Keith’s despondency or frustration. With a sigh, he moves himself closer to Keith, so their shoulders brush together where they sit beside the warm glow of the fire just beyond their makeshift shelter. “It is. And I find myself thoroughly grateful for it, all recent events considered.”

The subtle pull of Shiro’s warmth is one of the greatest temptations Keith has ever known. His heartstrings cinch tight. He hooks his fingers around each other, knotting his hands together to refrain from making any errant moves. How he wants to lean against Shiro and be assured that the man’s overgenerous affinity for him is all real and of his own volition rather than a sign of Keith’s siren traits preying on his inherent kindness.

His mind’s eye flashes to that last drawn-out, excruciating day in the longboat, clinging to an unconscious Shiro while scattering kisses over his bruised, sweat-covered skin. With the spectre of immediate death looming over them, it had felt right. Comforting. Certain. A pittance of what he and Shiro might have had. Now, with all of the urgency removed and the possibility of his mother’s siren magic at work in his veins, Keith is suddenly, immeasurably relieved that he never did confess his feelings in so many words. It would feel worse, he thinks, if he had.

He folds his arms around himself, grasping at his own elbows, and forces himself to recoil from the gentle heat Shiro gives off—subtly enough to go unnoticed, he thinks, while keeping a sliver of air between them. Then he stares adamantly into the flaring embers of the fire, wishing he could be more alone with his thoughts. Wishing he could slip down to Krolia’s beach without Shiro knowing or growing suspicious, to lay a whole new set of questions at her proverbial feet.

Beside him, Shiro shifts again, further widening the narrow gap between them. Then he sighs, troubled and sympathetic. As Keith continues to pointedly skirt his gaze, Shiro instead tips his head up to look at the stars that have begun to wink into view across the darkening sky

“You know, if I am to be trapped on a tropical island, potentially for the rest of my days,” Shiro offers in whisper-soft tones, his voice a soothing counter to Keith’s quiet turmoil, “I am glad it is with you.”

* * *

That night, a raging storm batters the island for hours on end, wind ripping at the lean-to of wood and palm fronds that blocks their cave’s entrance. Cold, wet air snakes its way past the canvas and into their meager shelter, snuffing out the last feeble embers of their indoors fire. And as the thunder reverberates all around them, like the growl of a creature that has them in the pit of its stomach, Keith feels Shiro shift closer to him upon their reed bed.

He can feel Shiro shivering, so near that each intake of breath causes Shiro’s chest to press into his spine. So near that Keith can feel the coolness of Shiro’s exhalations on his nape. Close, but not quite close enough to pool their warmth in any meaningful way. So while flecks of cold rain chase their way into the cave and thunder shakes the heavens and the earth around them, they lie there, uncomfortably awake.

* * *

They wake late the next morning, lazy from interrupted slumber and sticky with sweat from a humid, sunny morning.

Despite the less than restful night and Keith’s pleas for Shiro to take it easy, Shiro insists on helping to clean up their storm-wrecked camp. Shades of his usual stubbornness rear their head in his many declarations of, ‘I promise, I feel fine,’ and ‘Let me help or I will go stir-crazy here,’ and ‘No, no, I can do it myself,’ and Keith almost finds the familiarity of it as comforting as it is exasperating.

After lunch, Shiro suggests they range a little further out together, exploring reaches of the island that Keith hasn’t yet scouted out. And though Keith desperately wants to steal away to the shaded stretch of beach where Krolia visits, he cannot bring himself to deny Shiro, willful and optimistic as he is.

They end up pacing the coastline all the way to the far side of the island, heretofore unseen. Shiro’s voice crests over the ever-present rolling of the nearby waves, filling the air. He speculates aloud about where they might be located within the vastness of the ocean, and points out flora and fauna that look curiously unfamiliar, and moans despondently about all his books and painstakingly-kept journals that were lost when the Kerberos was attacked.

“I was able to salvage your violin, at least,” Keith pipes up as they trudge through the silky white sand, the fine grains warm as they sift between his toes. “Matt has it in safe-keeping, for now. Did I mention that already?”

“What? No, I had no idea, Keith,” he says, head whipping in Keith’s direction. He wears a makeshift sunhat Keith had tried to weave out of long, broad-leaved grasses to better shield Shiro’s skin from any more burns; the end result is ugly, misshapen, and fraught with holey gaps, but Shiro insists on wearing it anyway. “How? I mean, that is wonderful, but I hadn’t—I didn’t expect much of anything to be recovered.”

Keith gives a mild grunt in agreement. “It was lucky, how it washed up ashore. It’ll never play the same, if it plays at all, but…”

“I would still be glad to have it,” Shiro tells him. “It means a great deal to me, regardless of its condition. So, thank you, Keith.”

Keith can’t help but smile at Shiro’s pleasure in hearing the news, although it is tempered by the gravity of their situation. “It’s the least I could do, Shiro. And even then, I guess it doesn’t make much difference where the violin is if we remain stuck on this island forever.”

Shiro hums a low, thoughtfully concerned note and then lapses into silence, letting the chattering of the island’s birds take over. “Where did you beach the longboat that brought us here? Is it still seaworthy?”

Keith nibbles at his bottom lip and picks at the sand under his nails. “I… don’t know if it could carry us through another long voyage,” he says, measuring out each word.

“Perhaps we could find a way to modify it, make it sturdier,” Shiro mumbles to himself, now clearly preoccupied with the thought.

Inwardly, Keith quails. Leading Shiro to the longboat is as good as leading him to Krolia, who always seems to be waiting when Keith appears, and Keith cannot even guess at how severe Shiro’s reception to her might be.

Hell, Keith’s own reaction to Krolia was less than cool and collected, and he is her son. Shiro has no such blood ties to reassure him, even a little, and he cannot imagine what thoughts the man might turn to upon realizing he is alone on this island with a death-dealing siren and a death-dealing half-siren.

They tread another hundred or so paces, rounding the curve of a little inlet, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Keith’s eye keeps sliding seaward, out over the waves that spill across the shore, half expecting Krolia to appear here, too—as a gliding shadow under the surface, like a shark prowling the shallows for prey, or as a beautiful woman fashioned out of water itself, dripping and glimmering where she rises out of the waves. There is nothing stopping her from visiting wherever the island’s shores meet land, really. There is no reason she couldn’t be observing them right now, just out of sight.

A sudden gasp from Shiro startles Keith to the quick. He has barely turned, barely set his fingers to the grip of his dagger, when Shiro seizes his shoulder and gives him an excited jostle.

“Keith, look,” Shiro tells him, equal parts urgent and thrilled as he starts loping quicker across the sand, tugging Keith alongside him.

Following Shiro’s line of sight, Keith spies a curious silhouette on the beach up ahead: a ship. A small, single-masted cutter, by the looks of it. A vessel meant for speedy sailing, judging by the shape of the hull that sits exposed where it rests heavily upon the sandy beach. One meant to be exceptionally difficult to catch.

“Where do you think her crew might be?” Shiro ponders, running his hand along a plank of wood near the bow that is painted with the name Interloper.

“Not around here,” Keith guesses. The exposed wood is dry, but not so sun-baked and aged that it has begun to shrivel and gap. It landed here just days ago, perhaps.

There is no sound of life within the beached cutter, nor any signs that a stranded crew has been living out of it. And this close, Keith can tell that the Interloper is in awfully good condition for a ship run aground. Sure, the mast is listing heavily to one side and there are parts of the railing in need of repair, but they have trees aplenty on their little island. The rudder might be jammed, but that can be fixed as well. The sail can be mended, if there isn’t a spare left aboard. All in all, it is easily salvageable.

Keith wanders around the ship, a hand trailing over its sun-dried planks of wood, marveling at their fine luck. It’s the perfect size ship for them, really, probably built for a full crew of twenty or less—large enough to weather a storm and harness the winds, but small enough that they ought to be able to manage decently with just the two of them to steer and handle the rigging.

Along the starboard side, Keith grips onto the railing and hoists himself up onto the sloping deck of the grounded cutter. Then he turns back, gripping Shiro’s offered hand, and helps heave him aboard, too.

“Keith, our luck might be turning around,” Shiro says, half-smiling even as he pants from the exertion on his still-recovering body. “This could be our way off of this island. Our way back home.”

“She’s in good shape,” Keith comments as he carefully wanders above deck, one hand always on his dagger and one eye always on Shiro. The cutter is fairly nondescript, built for speed, and bears no flag. “Might’ve belonged to smugglers.”

Shiro grunts, easily agreeing with the assessment. “They do love fast ships. Not unlike yourself,” he adds, winking at Keith.

Keith’s skin flares hot from that wretchedly tiny gesture alone; god save him from this man and his effortless charms.

He darts below deck to hide the flush crawling up along his cheeks, seeking the shade. The cutter’s hold is still stocked with barrels of pitch, rum, oil, dried stores of food, carpentry tools, canvas, and more basic necessities. The tiny cabin still has blankets and clothing that haven’t yet gone musty, along with account books that detail a rather impressive number of illicit ventures between Coalition and Empire territory.

But there is no recent sign of the crew that had manned the smuggling ship. The hammocks in the cramped hold hang empty. There are chests of clothing still sealed and untouched—until Keith picks the locks, that is, and grabs up armfuls of shirts and breeches that they can make use of. There is little sign of a struggle or any grave damage that would’ve sent the cutter limping to the nearest shore.

It is as though the Interloper’s crew abandoned a perfectly sound ship.

“What do you think happened here?” Shiro asks as he slips on a large pair of boots they’d found, looking equal parts relieved to be spared from constantly walking barefoot and perplexed at the state of the ship they’d stumbled upon. “The crew, I mean. Could they be somewhere on the island, too? But if they were, why would they leave behind all these supplies?”

Keith hums in lieu of an answer. His fingertips ghost along the spokes of the helm, imagining how deft this small, flighty ship must be when she’s out on the waves—and how unlikely it is she would ever end up here like this, intact and empty.

Whatever happened to this cutter’s crew, Keith doubts they’re sharing the same deserted island. He doubts they’re alive at all.

* * *

While Shiro takes a rest in the cool shelter of their cave and finishes sorting out their new supplies, Keith wanders back to a familiar stretch of shore to fetch their supper for the night. He passes the empty longboat, paces to a jutting path of dark basalt a bit further down the beach, and settles down on the stone.

The sun sits low in the sky, hovering just above the horizon. With a sigh, Keith dips his legs into the cool saltwater, submerging them up to his bent knees, and then swishes his feet back and forth. It doesn’t take long for a dark shadow to arrive underneath the breaking waves, seeking him out.

Krolia’s face breaks the surface of the water first, followed by a plume of deep, seaweed-purple hair. Her body seems to coalesce just as she rises up out of the ocean, seafoam crowning her head and a shimmering coat of water across her skin. Her glistening form catches the remaining sunlight like crystal, gleaming in a million tiny facets, and makes her already-ethereal features appear even more alluring.

Once again, Keith finds himself with a deeper understanding of why sailors would flock to her if she beckoned them, despite the biting fangs behind her full lips and the dark talons that tip her slender fingers. 

“I did not know if I would see you today,” Krolia says from where she drifts amid the waves, letting herself be gently pushed and pulled by the tides. “Or tomorrow, even.”

For Keith, her tone is hard to place—longing or disappointed? He can’t quite tell, but it is hard to imagine being missed by anyone but Shiro. He still isn’t sure what he is to Krolia—progeny worthy of interest now that he’s demonstrated some siren talents? A passing curiosity for her, as his father must’ve been? A child she cares for enough to spare him a slow death at sea, but not enough to remain a fixture in his young life?

“Well… I’m here,” he lamely answers, shrugging his shoulders. “With questions for you.”

“I see,” Krolia says after several long seconds of silence have lapsed. “I have something for you as well.”

Keith expects more sea snails or a string of fish for roasting, but Krolia only raises her hand, those clawed fingers curled into a loose fist. She drifts closer to the stone where he sits, reaches up, and spills a handful of pearls onto the hexagonal surface of a basalt column within arm’s reach of Keith.

“I understand humans to be fond of them, even when they serve little use,” she explains.

The pearls roll and bounce over the rock, a few tumbling into crevices or back into the ocean. Most of them are a lustrous, creamy white, but a precious few verge on silvery or golden or rich, shimmering black. And Keith, who had never before been one for gemstones or jewelry, finds himself admiring the unnecessary gift—less for himself, though, and more for whether Shiro might fancy them.

“Thank you,” Keith says, gathering up the pearls and pocketing them. Krolia has no use for them anyway, it sounds like, and if he leaves them here they’ll just be swept back into the sea. “I appreciate how much you’ve given us. Me. Especially the things that helped heal Shiro. I can scarcely believe how well they worked. Like magic.”

Krolia lays her hands atop the stone and rests her cheek upon them, looking up at Keith as she gives a wan smile. “All the real magic left in the world lies at the bottom of the sea. Sharing it with you is the least I can do, Keith.”

Keith wonders at that. Wonders at Krolia, who had once seen fit to leave him and his father with nary a word but now lays all the bounty of the sea at his feet. He understands her as little as he understands the tangle of emotion coiled tight within his own body, wrapped around heart and mind alike. It is easier to imagine that Krolia is not so different from the depths of the ocean itself—a force of nature, mysterious and unfathomable, unfazed by human whims—but time and again, she acts in ways that undercut all of Keith’s wary expectations.

“We found a small ship around the other side of the island,” he says, not quite looking Krolia in the eye. “One in very good condition. One small enough that a measly crew of two might be able to see her safely to the nearest port. Still well-stocked, too. I’d guess it can’t have been beached there more than a week.” He pauses, his stare meeting hers. “Was that your handiwork?”

Krolia’s head tilts a scant few degrees, the impression of a smile left faint on her lips.

“You needed something a bit sturdier than that,” she says, swishing a flick of water toward the longboat still resting high on the shore, “if you mean to return to the rest of humankind once more.”

The admission only adds an air of certainty to what Keith had already expected. Known, really.

“Is it lacking in some regard?” Krolia asks a moment after, some concern trickling into her soft, musical voice. “Or do you merely object to my providing it?”

“No and no,” Keith quickly answers, shaking his head. Even if his newfound mother did drown a crew of smugglers and steal their ship, he has precious little room to criticize, considering his own past. “We do need it, if we’re to have a chance of sailing home, and a cutter like that will serve us well. And I’ve been known to put crews to the sword for lesser reasons, so…” 

Krolia nods to herself, satisfied that Keith is satisfied, and bobs along in the water.

“And you would be fine with my leaving this island, then?” Keith questions with slow, hitched words, watching Krolia’s face for any flicker of reaction. “Easy come, easy go?”

At first, there is only the placid cool of her usual expression. Then Krolia’s water-flecked features contort, perturbed, before softening down into something more resigned. “Fine is not the word I would choose, no. But I would not keep you here, nor hold you back from returning where you belong.”

Tentatively, she draws herself along the half-submerged pillars of stone, closer to where Keith sits with water licking up his calves. When Keith makes no startled movement, no objection, she lays her slender hands atop a low rise of rock, water pooling under her palms. Her talons scrape across the basalt as she pulls herself up and halfway out of the sea, her fluid form twisting at her hips; she sits at an angle, as Keith might imagine a mermaid would, with her legs and feet still submerged.

Extending this far out of the water, Krolia looks more… solid, at least from the waist up. More likely to hold firm if Keith were to touch her, rather than dissolve and spill through his fingers. More humanlike, although her ears still have pointed tips and her skin is still a deep, cool shade of mauve.

“I know that our first meeting must have come as a shock to you on so many fronts, Keith. I have never begrudged you your mistrust,” Krolia starts, as if worried Keith is liable to bolt inland at any moment now that she has closed the gap between them. “And I never, ever anticipated that I would be apart from you for so long, and years of absence—time lost from the people you love most—is not an easy thing to mend, much less in a matter of days or weeks.” 

Keith doesn’t have the words to answer that. Doesn’t even know where to begin grappling with it, although the word love sticks in his ears like an echo that just won’t fade. He came here to ask about Shiro, about what can be done to undo anything untoward his songs might have done to the man, but instead Keith finds himself drawn to a subject he has pointedly avoided ever since meeting Krolia.

“But you left,” he says after a minute of silence steadily swelling between them. “Or maybe we did. Either way, I never knew you. Never even knew of you. And how can you—how can anyone love someone that they don’t know?”

Krolia’s slender eyebrows pinch inward and her lips part, and the look in her strange, gold-tinged eyes is almost grief-stricken. “I am sorry, Keith. Parting from you was a necessity, never something I wished. Whether you believe me or not, I do love you. I always have, from the moment I first held you in my arms.”

Keith’s shoulders lift as he draws in a swift, shaking breath, his hands braced on either side of himself. Even after meeting Krolia, he had thought himself long past the point of needing or wanting a parent again; it seems that childhood yearning for the mother who’d always been lost to him is hard to shake.

“You were… a surprise,” Krolia tells him, her eyes wetter along their corners even as she smiles. “Half-sirens are a rarity for a reason. We were overjoyed, though, Keith. Both of us.”

She pauses, glancing down and to one side.

“But it quickly became apparent that you took strongly after your father,” she says, on the verge of a sigh. “The sea is the source of my strength, and I cannot part from it. Yet its waters were too cold for you, its salt and sand too harsh on your skin. So often, I could only sit nearby and watch your father hold you.”

The severe, tensed set of Keith’s shoulders softens slightly. Krolia is almost near enough to touch, if he wished to reach out to her.

“Your father was a solitary man, and while we enjoyed our life together, we both agreed that our circumstances were not right for you. You deserved better than utter isolation, with only your parents for lifelong company. You deserved more than a mother who could never join you on land, nor nurse you when you took ill, nor sleep beside you when you were frightened,” she adds, her voice trailing into a rueful, hoarse-throated whisper. “I knew you would fare better in the human world with your father, among people more like yourself.”

But I didn’t, is what Keith half wants to tell her, curling his hands into the stone underneath him. I didn’t fare better. Even surrounded by people, I grew up alone. Even aboard ships crowded like jars of sardines, I was alone. First no mother, then no father, and no one left to mourn me when my turn inevitably came. 

“Father told me you were gone, when he ever spoke of you at all,” is what he says instead, at a loss for why he had been left in the dark for all of his life. “Why couldn’t I see you even once? We had a cottage right by the shore. A stone’s throw from the beach.”

Krolia shakes her head, her eyes squeezing shut. “Myriad reasons. When your father took you back to the mainland, you had no memories of me. We thought it would be easier if we kept it that way, lest you mention a strange woman in the sea to the townspeople and raise their suspicions. Lest the wrong people see you speaking to me. Lest anyone begin to murmur that you yourself might not be entirely human.”

Keith can see the reason in that, even if he finds it no less bitter and disappointing.

“Your father thought to tell you the truth once you were older,” Krolia whispers, as though that might console him. At Keith’s prolonged silence, her gaze drops to the short stretch of empty stone that lies between them, idly scratching a long, dark claw over its surface. “Once you knew well how to keep a secret. And after you’d had a chance at a normal life, so that you could choose for yourself how or if I might fit into it.”

Keith draws his legs up out of the cooling seawater and plants his heels on the basalt, resting his chin upon his bent knees. He lets out a breath and finds his chest lighter afterward, his body a little less tense. These aren’t satisfying answers. They don’t undo the years of loneliness he’d spent on his own, nor the way he’d grown into something stunted and hard and prickly as a result. But the reassurance that his mother had wanted him, missed him, loved him? It does manage to soothe some of the deeper bruises in his heart, lessening an ache that Keith had long tried his best to ignore.

He had spent so much of his childhood wishing for either his mother or father to be around, and now he has been granted that very opportunity out of the blue.

Keith’s toes, slightly pruny from their soak, curl in on themselves. “So… how did you two meet?”

“It would be quite a long story,” Krolia sighs, her smile brightening even as the glimmering look in her eyes turns fond and faraway, “best saved for another time, as I am certain Shiro will be missing you shortly. But for now, I can tell you that he saved me, once, when I was at my weakest, and later I spared his life in return. On an island not so unlike this one, we grew to know and love each other.”

Keith can’t help but smile at that. “Did you ever see him after we left? When he was out sailing?”

“We crossed paths, yes,” Krolia answers as she slips back down into the water, quiet as a solitary raindrop. At once, her skin softens to its usual semi-translucent, watery sheen and her kelplike hair billows with life. Cradled by the ocean waves, she immediately appears more comfortable. “I could not always tell when or where he was out on the sea, but sometimes I would feel this… little pull in a certain direction. And when I did, I would swim leagues and leagues until I saw his ship on the horizon. We would look for each other during his night watches and steal a few words—and a few touches, once, when he leaned too far over the railing and fell overboard.”

Keith gives a short chuckle, the recollection of what his father looked like a bit hazy as he tries to picture him toppling over the side of a merchant ship and right into Krolia’s grasp. And then he sighs at all this talk of his father, his smile slowly fading. With his arms still looped around his legs, Keith squeezes himself tight and says, “I wish he were still here.”

“As do I, constantly.” She folds her hands upon the stone and rests her chin atop them, her dripping eyelashes lowered. But then her gaze lifts, settling warmly on Keith. “He would be overjoyed to see you now, Keith—a man of fierce loyalty and conviction, with a kind and generous heart.” 

Keith rolls his head to one side and huffs out in disbelief. He is a great many things, but neither kind nor generous would make first billing.

“Do not scoff at me,” Krolia warns, although her voice lacks the venom that those sharp fangs call to mind. “I may not have had the opportunity to meet him yet, but I am certain your Shiro would agree with me.”

Shiro. Right.

“Well, of course he would. That’s just how Shiro is. He’s always thought more highly of me than anyone else. Even myself.” He thinks of the lost journals that had named him Eurybia’s Star and can’t help but smile, despite all his worrying; Shiro is, at his heart, a sentimental and stubbornly optimistic man fascinated with the world around him, and that will never be anything less than endearing. Quietly, almost urgently, Keith adds, “And I’m afraid I might have wronged him, because of that.”

Keith glances back toward the shore, nervous that Shiro will come looking for him and somehow stumble onto the very path that leads here. With a soft grunt, he eases himself off of the basalt pillars and slides down into the high tide alongside his mother, letting the saltwater soak into his breeches and lick its way up to his chest. It’ll be easier to duck out of sight this way, just in case.

“Keith?” Krolia murmurs as she glides in closer, an air of attentive concern about her. Her hands rise from the water, hovering well shy of taking Keith by the shoulders the way she wants to.

“With all this half-siren nonsense I never knew about,” Keith continues, just able to keep his voice from cracking, “the more I find out, the more I’m afraid that I tricked Shiro into—I don’t know, caring more than he ought to? Treating me well at his own expense? I just—I sang for him so much, and well before the longboat incident. Even if he didn’t respond to it like everyone else, it had to be doing something to him, didn’t it?”

Keith takes a moment to breathe. He feels weary, the weight of his worry like an anchor hung around his neck; it is a smidge lighter, though, having been able to voice them aloud to the one person who can hopefully understand them.

“I cannot claim to know everything,” Krolia whispers, her hands finally cupping around Keith’s shoulders and giving him a gentle squeeze, “but I will tell you what I do know. A siren’s song can work great and terrible wonders, but whatever it makes a mortal feel in their heart—lust, ardor, admiration—is ultimately illusory. It fades when the song ends or when they die, whichever comes first. The first genuine emotion to follow is usually confusion or abject terror, in my experience,” she adds, almost offhandedly.

Keith quietly nods along, exhaling in relief at the reassurance of any damage he’d done only being temporary.

Eye to eye with Keith, Krolia continues. “Is Shiro a different man when you sing to him? Does he lose all control of himself? Does he clamor to touch you and promise you everything under the sun? Does he drop to his knees, awed and overpowered?”

“What? No. No, he’s not at all different. Nothing like any of that at all,” Keith chokes out, equal parts horrified at the thought of witching Shiro into passion and at the low, quickly-squashed thrill the picture rouses in him. And then Keith has to wonder, “Why is that? Only he and father have heard me and brushed it off.”

Krolia’s lips curl up into a smile, while the look in her eye wavers somewhere between deeply pleased and mischievous.

“There is one thing which seems to dull the hooks of a siren’s song,” she says, “which at its most elemental and innate seeks to cause an infatuation which can overpower the senses—even that of self-preservation. But if the listener is already truly adoring, truly devoted, truly loving of the siren they hear, what room is there for a lesser illusion to take root?”

It takes time for Krolia’s meaning to ripple through Keith’s mind and dissipate into some semblance of understanding. On its heels comes a smarting blush and a wave of self-consciousness. Keith immediately sinks down into the water, out of his mother’s sight, to soothe his burning skin and let the steady woosh of the barreling waves off the shore quiet his pounding thoughts.

When he rises up out of the dark, sunless water again, it’s to the sound of a low, subdued laugh slipping out between Krolia’s pointed teeth and full lips. She is already within arm’s length, still bubbly with amusement at Keith’s sudden shyness. Careful of her claws, she parts his wet locks and combs them out of Keith’s face—tenderly, affectionately, the very picture of the doting mother he had never been privileged to know. 

Keith finds he doesn’t mind his mother’s touch at all; not even while he feels so vulnerable, both in and out of his element as they drift in the shallow, swirling waters along the beach. He closes his eyes and swallows, his adam’s apple bobbing against the water that laps up against his throat.

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean, um, romantic love,” Keith slowly reasons out, wary of letting his carefully managed hopes run away with him. If it can be said that Shiro loves him, it’s a mite more realistic that it would be as a friend or a brother before anything else.

“No, not necessarily,” Krolia concedes. “A father’s love for his son can be just as powerful and unwavering.” Then, with a lift of her brow, she adds, “But I have seen the way he looks at you.”

“What?” Keith startles right out of her reach, splashing as he wheels backward. “When?”

“Just this afternoon, as you walked along the beach,” Krolia answers with a cheeky shrug of one shoulder.

Keith sighs. He’d expected as much. No wonder he’d felt so keenly that she might be near, ready to pop up out of the sea at any moment.

“It’s more complicated than that. Even if Shiro did feel for me in that way,” Keith says, nearly stumbling over his own tongue, “there are a hundred good reasons for him to never pursue it. So it’s—it isn’t worth seriously considering.”

“Oh?” Krolia tips her head, her voice high with feigned curiosity. “And what are these reasons?”

“His status, his good reputation, his father’s ire,” Keith rattles off. There’s quite a rabbit hole he could travel down if he really wanted to make a definitive list. “My checkered past doesn’t help matters. And now there’s—” he gestures toward himself, “—the whole siren deal, too.”

“More unlikely matches have been made, you know,” she reminds him, her smile half sly and half proud. “And he would be quite lucky to have you.”

Keith snorts in blatant disbelief, then sinks lower into the sea as Krolia’s pleased expression quickly withers. Feeling the need to defend both his response, he rises back up just enough to speak without saltwater spilling into his mouth. “You haven’t properly met Shiro yet. If you had, you’d understand.”

“Mhm,” Krolia dryly agrees without really agreeing at all, her eyes following Keith as he rests nose-deep in the waves, ready to wink out of sight at any moment. “I have met you, though, and you are a fine catch yourself. Have a little confidence, Keith.”

Keith drops back underwater, a flood of rising bubbles left in his wake, unable to bear another second of Krolia’s mortifyingly generous flattery. When he reemerges once more, his hair plastered down to his skin and his chin dripping, it’s to quietly murmur, “He’s done more for me than you can imagine. It’s hard to feel worthy of someone that good.”

“But you are. Would he ever have twined his life into yours if he thought any less?” Krolia gently reassures, her soaking hair spilling to one side as she tips her head. Under the blackening water, beyond sight, she finds Keith’s hand and takes it into her own. “Look, the sun has already set. You should get back to Shiro before you are too long missed.”

Keith nods, treading his feet until they settle back into loose, sifting sand. Before he lets go of his mother’s hand, he gives it a light squeeze. “I should. But thanks for listening to me. I like having someone to talk about father with. And siren business. Or half-siren business, anyway.”

“I will always help you in any manner I can. I have many lost years to begin making up for.” Krolia hesitates for a moment, her eyes squinting underneath those long, perpetually dewy lashes. “If you would like me to.”

Still trudging his way up out of the surf, Keith nods. Smiles, too, to his own surprise. It’s been ages since he’s had a living parent at all, let alone a mother, and while the feeling is still enmeshed in awkward uncertainty, he thinks he could definitely get used to it.

“Before I forget,” Krolia calls out just before she fades into the nighttime-dark water that rushes up from the sea, only a swirl of foamy seawater left in her wake. The soothing sound of the waves rolls on. And then she reemerges just as suddenly, her watery shape turning solid as she hauls up a woven net packed with shells and shellfish, and presses it into Keith’s arms. “For you and Shiro. And I hope that one day soon I will be able to meet him properly, as you said.”

* * *

After reuniting with a relieved Shiro, Keith starts roasting the oysters and crabs in the low embers of the fire. He picks the meat free with the tip of a small paring knife they’d found on the abandoned ship, piling it up atop a waxy leaf. He tells Shiro to help himself more than once, but Shiro refuses to take a bite until Keith is finished and ready to eat, too.

They bed down not long after, Keith curled on his side as he lies awake half the night wondering how he will ever broach the topic of his mother with Shiro. 

In a strange way, he misses the clarity he had felt as they laid in that little longboat lost at sea; how much easier it had been, then, to flay himself bare before Shiro and make his every reserved thought known, unafraid of incurring any toll on their bond. Now, all of that desperate courage is nowhere to be found. Knots of anxiety tangle around Keith’s guts, cinching tight and forcing a cool sweat along his brow before loosening just long enough for his breath to steady. His certainty crests and ebbs from one minute to the next.

Shiro had accepted him even as a murderous pirate, had forgiven him even after winding up on the pointy end of Keith’s dagger, and had tarnished his own reputation to defend Keith’s, so perhaps he could take a bit of siren blood well in stride, too. Or… maybe this is a bridge too far, even for him. Even if sailors weren’t already the most superstitious creatures to walk the earth, Keith knows that these are not traits liable to endear him to anyone: ties to the dreaded sirens of ancient myth, inhuman blood in his veins, and a predisposition toward sea sorcery.

While Keith wrestles for the right words—ones that will let him be truthful to Shiro without risking the loss of his good will—Shiro himself wrestles with some figment of his imagination.

At first, Keith takes it for the man’s habitual sleep-murmuring, but Shiro’s lips don’t move with half-formed orders or Keith’s own name, dreaming of work even while he rests. No, it’s nothing like that.

A cool sweat rises along Shiro’s temples, glistening bright under the thin shafts of moonlight that pour into their shelter. Furrows grow between his brows. That strong, squared jaw clicks with the heavy grinding of teeth. His eyes twitch frantically under their lids, and as Shiro’s breaths turn shallow and fevered, a groan keens out of his parted mouth.

Keith hesitates, neither wanting to embarrass Shiro nor disturb his well-earned slumber. But as Shiro’s sleeping form curls in on itself and his murmurs turn low, pained, whimpering, Keith cannot stop himself.

He reaches out for Shiro in the dark, gripping his shoulder and jostling him awake, his hands running down the man’s flanks and up his chest, trying to soothe away the awful phantasm that had gripped him. Shiro rouses in a daze, his breathing still quick and short; for a moment, he doesn’t seem to recognize Keith at all, a fearful glimmer in his watery, unfocused eyes.

And then the last of the nightmare’s fog releases him, Shiro’s long lashes fluttering as he blinks away the last of whatever horrible picture his mind’s eye had painted for him. When the weight of his gaze settles on Keith anew, it is with relief and weariness both.

“Keith.”

“Sorry to wake you, Shiro,” Keith tells him in low, apologetic tones. His hands linger on Shiro for a moment, frozen where they’d been when Shiro woke; then Keith withdraws them, tucks his arms close to his body, and curls his fingers into the rushes underneath them. “Whatever you were dreaming about sounded unpleasant.”

“It was,” Shiro croaks back. “Very unpleasant.”

He clears his throat and lets his head drop back onto their grassy bed, his chest shuddering with a long, stuttering exhale. His eyes squeeze shut tight, as if blocking out the lingering thought of it, his fine features pinched with distress. And then Shiro seems to remember that Keith is here, right beside him, watching on in concern; he abruptly rolls onto his back and tips his head aside, away from Keith’s sight, drawing in a long and unsteady breath.

“Shiro?” A long beat of silence drags by. In a whisper, Keith asks, “Is there anything I can do?”

“Nothing to be done about it,” Shiro eventually answers, sighing as he rolls back onto his side and faces Keith once more. He still looks a little haggard, a little haunted around the tired droop of his eyes, but the flicker of a dry smile over his lips is obviously meant to reassure. “But I appreciate being awoken.”

Keit gives a low, agreeing hum. No one enjoys being trapped in the quicksand of a dream gone awry.

“I know it’s been weeks,” Shiro murmurs shortly after, “or at least I think it has, anyway… but sometimes, my mind is still there.”

Keith’s chest tightens with foreboding. “Sendak’s ship?”

A miniscule flinch runs down the length of Shiro’s body. “Mm.”

Keith stews in that answer, his hands curling into tight fists underneath him, a white-knuckled anger supplanting any whiff of restful sleep that might’ve been coming his way. What he wouldn’t give to be able to rake Sendak over the coals as he rightly deserves—but that ship has come and gone, and Keith has no outlet for the blinding fury that sparks inside of him at the sight of Shiro still blighted by that cruel man’s existence.

But there is Shiro here, in need of comfort, and Keith wants nothing more than to give it.

“I could try to distract your thoughts from it,” Keith offers, scooting closer toward Shiro. But not close enough to brush shoulders or knock their ankles together, of course. “Talk of other things until you fall asleep. My father used to soothe me that way.”

He’d brush Keith’s hair, too, and hum him to sleep by the hearth fire. Keith’s fingers twitch as he glances at the silver-and-ink of Shiro’s mussed hair, left loose while he sleeps, very much wishing he could do the same.

“Keith,” Shiro says, his name half a sigh. His smile is still small, half-hidden as he rubs his cheek into their reed bed, but it feels genuine. “You are an angel, but you need not worry about me. I had some trouble sleeping after I lost my arm, too. I can weather my way through this just the same.”

“And I’m supposed to sit idly by while you do?” Keith mutters, now galled by Shiro’s resignation to quietly suffering on his own. “Shiro. It’s not as if I have anything better to do, and surely it can’t hurt. You need your rest.”

“As do you,” Shiro counters, one of his knees pointedly bumping into Keith’s, the brief friction of it nearly enough to make Keith leap out of his skin. “Sleep. It’s bad enough that I already woke you with my grousing.”

“You didn’t wake me,” Keith argues. “I hadn’t even fallen asleep yet.”

“All the more reason you ought to get some shut-eye, then.”

In the dark, Keith resigns himself to the improbability of getting a wink of sleep tonight. His thoughts had already been a whirling mess of doubt before Shiro had been stirred awake by phantoms of the recent past. Now, they’re aflutter all over again, his heart churning once more with the worry that the longer he holds this part of himself secret from Shiro, the more he will have to answer for when the truth inevitably comes out.

Sweat slicks itself over Keith’s palms as he whispers out a tentative, “Shiro?” and halfway hopes there will be no reply.

It’s slow to come, but Shiro answers with a drawn, sleepy, “Mm?”

“I have something to tell you.” Keith can barely hold still for the rattling of his heart against his ribs, half-deafened by the pounding of his pulse in his own ears. His clammy hands wind into the pile of reeds they’re bedded down on as he inwardly steels himself to retreat somewhere else to sleep after this—to give Shiro time to process the revelation, to reconsider Keith and their bond, to hopefully accept him as is. “Now might not be a good time, but I worry that if I don’t say it, I’ll lose courage by morning.”

“Oh?” Shiro’s voice rings clearer at that, all traces of weariness replaced with interest and concern. “Then go on, Keith.”

“I, ah… I met my mother recently,” Keith whispers, watching as Shiro’s sleep-heavy eyes gradually grow wide and round, the bright moonlight turning their grey into pure silver. “Very recently.”

Shiro’s lips part, a surprised intake of air slipping through. “You—oh? Well, Keith, congratulations! That is wonderful news. You came across her… oh, I suppose it must have been while I was imprisoned on the Purification? A spot of good luck amid everything else, then. In what town? Or is she a sailor like you?”

“No,” Keith croaks back, feeling more nervous in the face of Shiro’s very understandable assumptions. “No, we met much more recently than that.”

In the mellow darkness and fallen moonlight, Keith watches as Shiro’s expression shifts from one of pleasant surprise to furrowed-brow confusion, those gunmetal eyes glinting as he tries to make sense of Keith’s words.

“Aboard Sendak’s ship?” Shiro questions in a razor thin whisper, the look in his eyes inscrutable.

“No, no, not there either,” Keith quickly corrects. “She… she found us at sea, after everything else. She brought us to this island, actually.”

Keith doesn’t wait for Shiro to ask anything more—better to fling it all at his feet now and let him make of it what he will. Keith draws in a deep breath first, disappointed when it does absolutely nothing to calm his nerves. “She is a siren.”

“A siren,” Shiro repeats, his lips barely moving. His features don’t change this time, not even with shock, and his stare remains riveted on Keith like he is afraid to leave him out of sight for even a heartbeat. 

“Like the kind out of old sailors’ myths,” Keith further confirms, wringing his hands together where he lay. He shifts himself a few inches further away from Shiro, not wanting the man to feel penned in or endangered, even for a moment; god knows he’s been through enough as it is. With a sad sort of humor, he shrugs and adds, “Strange but true. Half the blood in my veins isn’t human at all.”

Shiro doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink.

“I didn’t know, Shiro, for the longest time. I swear it,” Keith hurries to assure, suddenly afraid that Shiro will think that he has deceived him all along. “My father never mentioned her, and she had no idea of my whereabouts after he died. And I… if I knew, I would’ve told you, for whatever that’s worth, and I would never have sung around you at all. And I understand if learning this changes things between us. If you’re unsettled, having me around. If you want me to go, or—or anything, Shiro, I—”

“Go where?” Shiro asks at once, his brow knitting tight. The stunned spell that had taken hold of him at the first mention of Keith’s mother fades, and Shiro’s features recompose themselves into a familiar look of patient, kind-eyed reassurance. “Keith, you are not to go anywhere, understood?”

Keith swallows back everything else he’d been ready to babble out—promises, pleas, tales of his mother’s aid—and nods, not even thinking of whether Shiro can see him in the dark. His nose scrunches as he forces back the quick pinprick of tears at the corners of his eyes, and his lips thin as he presses them tight and worries them between his teeth.

He barely notices the faint rustle of the dry rushes they sleep on, some movement under the threadbare quilt they share pushing the grassy stalks this way and that. But then something warm brushes across the knuckles of Keith’s clenched hand and he withdraws in a flinch, as if a spark of ember from a roaring fire had seared him.

“Keith,” Shiro says, quietly imploring, and Keith realizes the touch must’ve been him.

When Keith gingerly relaxes his arm and lowers his hand once more, he finds an open palm and splayed fingers waiting.

Shiro’s hand is larger than his, its palm broad and squared and creased with lines of fate and heart and whatever else. There’s no leather between them to blunt the warmth that blooms from Shiro’s flesh, nor to mask the softness of his skin. His fingers are thicker, stronger, less calloused than Keith’s; they curl up around Keith’s smaller, slighter hand and hold fast, the touch making goosepimples rise all along Keith’s forearms.

“I believe you, Keith. Implicitly. Discovering another facet of you doesn’t change that,“ Shiro comforts, his grip tightening around Keith’s hand in silent emphasis. “You are the same Keith who handpicked all the crabmeat for my supper, aren’t you? And the one who nursed me back to health time and again? The same man I named my navigator and spent the better part of two years sailing with?”

At the sweetly sentimental reassurances, Keith flexes his fingers within Shiro’s grasp. His throat is lodged with half-formed words, every swallow turned gummy with a seaswell of emotion that could capsize his self-control in a heartbeat. He should like to grip Shiro’s hand tight between both of his own and draw it close to his chest; to sleep like that, holding Shiro to him through the night.

“You will always be what matters to me, rather than whatever blood you carry within you. And you are still the very same Keith that I have always known. And always liked,” Shiro adds, the smile evident from his tone alone.

His thumb strokes up along the side of Keith’s palm, its nail dragging lightly against the delicate underside of his wrist. Shiro doesn’t slacken his grip on Keith even as he shifts closer under the ragged quilt they’d salvaged from the Interloper, as if determined to prove his steadfastness and continued trust in Keith’s nature.

“Shiro…” Keith finally manages to say, the name sticky within his dry mouth. “I don’t know what to say. I would’ve understood if you became wary of me, even just for a while.”

“How could I doubt you, after all we’ve been through together?” Shiro asks, his short, breezy laugh making Keith’s heart leap and his skin flush. “Keith. You saved me from the jaws of hell, more or less, by sheer will alone. If you think a little thing like being born of a notoriously dangerous, heretofore mythological creature would make me forsake you, you are sorely mistaken.”

“Forgive me,” Keith sighs, awash in a radiant, half-giddy relief. “There have been many people who despised and mistrusted me for far less. And you… you’ve already overlooked and forgiven so many of my, um, past indiscretions. I worried I was pressing my luck past its limit.”

The rushes crinkle as Shiro slowly shakes his head. In the soft darkness, Keith can make out the slight curve of full lips and the fanning of dark lashes along half-lidded eyes. “Far from it.”

At that, Keith well and truly relaxes where he lay. It is as though a yoke bolted around his neck has finally loosened and heavy manacles of his own making have fallen free from his wrists. And the way Shiro still holds his hand… ah, that makes him feel lighter, too.

“I will confess that I feel somewhat vindicated,” Shiro murmurs as he considers the man lying directly beside him, their faces turned toward each other and barely more than a foot apart. “I had always fancied there was something about you, you know? Some aspect of you that I couldn not quite ascribe to seafaring experience or pure, dumb luck. You have always been exceptional for myriad reasons, and this… it does make sense to me, outlandish as it is.”

“You had a better inkling of it than I did, then,” Keith murmurs, his insides bubbling with a heady, thrilling dose of relief, similar to the rush of averting a near disaster. “Whenever I worried that I might be fundamentally different from other people, I assumed it was a personal deficit. Nothing spectacular. Nothing useful. Nothing a man such as yourself might admire.”

“Well,” Shiro says, humming under his breath. “Some things are easier to notice through another’s eyes. And speaking of, for all those times you mercilessly teased me for what I called you in my journal, I wasn’t actually that far off.”

“A siren is a bit different than a sea goddess,” Keith points out, the corner of his mouth quirking.

“Not that different,” Shiro insists, and Keith can tell by his tone that he intends to dig his heels in on this one small matter of pride. “It is sort of splitting hairs, is it not? Between one unlikely, legendary influence and another?”

“If you say so,” Keith blandly answers, if only to make Shiro huff and grumble.

They lapse into silence, but it’s entirely unlike the pensive quiet that Keith had spent most of the night brewing in. Contentment layers over him like a second blanket. His breathing turns deeper and more relaxed, much like Shiro’s. Keith’s skin is warm rather than nervously clammy, and Shiro’s hand remains secure around his own, like a lifeline to buoy him all through the night.

And then Shiro whispers, “You know, Lance always complained that you thought too highly of yourself to join in whenever the crew started up a shanty. And I simply took you for shy and in need of a little encouragement. Now, I suppose your reluctance must have had to do with this siren business all along?”

Keith grunts. “Mn. All I knew back then was that my singing voice drew a lot of unpleasant attention. I didn’t mean for it to, but… it affected people. In disquieting ways. So I stopped.”

Shiro answers with a soft, thoughtful sound. “But I have listened to you sing—and fairly often at that—without suffering any adverse effects,” he muses out loud, a note of wonder in his voice. “At least, none that I have noticed.”

“There can be exceptions, apparently,” Keith offers, fidgeting as his mother’s words on the matter cross his mind for the hundredth time that day. He tamps down on his bottom lip as he briefly considers giving Shiro the supposed reason—love on the listener’s part, pure and powerful—and then gauging his reaction. Just as quickly, Keith decides against it, wary of complicating what has already been a rather momentous night in terms of personal revelation. “But they’re rare. Exceedingly rare.”

“Ah. Must be my usual good fortune at work, then,” Shiro jokes, grinning until Keith finally smiles back. “But really. I mean it. I would consider myself very unlucky indeed to have never been able to hear your singing and properly appreciate it.”

“It’s nothing to write home about.” Keith absently flexes his grip around Shiro’s hand and lets his eyes fall halfway shut. At the moment, he would like nothing more than to roll onto his other side, sling Shiro’s arm over himself, and nestle up close, his back pressed to Shiro’s front; as it is, though, all he can bring himself to do is stroke his thumb along Shiro’s knuckle.

“It’s incredible,” Shiro counters, turning his head aside as he yawns right after. “Your songs always set me at ease.”

“Would you want me to sing for you now?” Keith asks. It only takes a heartbeat to second-guess himself for it, but Shiro is somehow even quicker.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Shiro murmurs, the gentle grip of his hand finally loosening. But he doesn’t wrest himself free or draw back—simply leaves it where it lay, palm to palm against Keith’s. “I think I would sleep more soundly for it.”

Well, Keith can hardly deny him that, as there aren’t many hours left before dawn finds them. He clears his throat and starts a slow, mournful number from years ago, first heard in bits and pieces when he’d laid awake and heard his father singing to himself beside the hearth. He doesn’t even remember remembering it, honestly, but the words surface in his mind like bubbles inexorably finding their way upward from the deepest trenches of the sea. The tune itself stirs something in Keith, shaking dust off of memories he had locked away and forgotten.

In the moonlight-softened darkness, he watches as the faint outline of Shiro’s lingering smile fades and his mouth gently falls slack. The hand cupped around Keith’s goes utterly limp, pliant even as Keith absently strokes along the backs of strong fingers and over his nails. The parts of Shiro’s face where moonglow falls appear years younger and a lifetime softer: the shadowed creases at the corners of his eyes turn whisper-fine; the tension threaded into Shiro’s brow disappears, like a plucked string finally released; the habitual clench of his jaw lies dormant.

And only when Keith is certain that Shiro is dreaming again—happily, this time—does he finally go quiet, too. 

* * *

Keith wakes with his nose pressed into a warm, broad stretch of chest, where the loose vee of Shiro’s unlaced shirt hangs open and bare, scar-patterned skin peeks out. Breath moves against his hair, its rhythm still steady in the manner that only slumber can achieve. Warm, comforting weight drapes over Keith, loosely caging him in. When he moves to sleepily stretch his legs, he is met with a similar sensation—a pleasant firmness on either side of his left leg, heat radiating up his slim thigh as he sleepily pushes his bent knee deeper into the squeeze that surrounds it.

Wincing at the bright sunlight pouring in, Keith’s gaze slides up over fine clavicles and the hollow of Shiro’s throat. Then the strong column of his windpipe. His adam’s apple. The underside of his jaw… its corner right there, at the juncture where his neck and skull meet, nestled just under one of Shiro’s slightly large, well-shaped ears. Close enough for Keith to tickle with his breath, if he were to tilt his head a bit. Or if he started here, just above Shiro’s steadily-beating heart, Keith could lick one clean, continuous stripe all the way up to that tempting spot; he could bury his nose in Shiro’s hair and graze his teeth along the shapely curve of his jaw, suckling his way to the earlobe just—

Keith catches himself with his lips parted and the tip of his tongue a hair’s breadth from the rise and fall of Shiro’s chest. He’d been slow to rouse, yes—drunk on deep, contented sleep and the unfamiliar warmth of another body—but now waking awareness converges on Keith with the force of a crossbow bolt between the eyes.

A compromising position doesn’t suffice. Keith is clinging to Shiro like an especially avid octopus, plastered to his front with his face sunken into the exposed hills and valley of his chest. His thigh is jammed in between Shiro’s, every shift he makes indecent. And he had, in his sleep-addled fogginess, very seriously considered mouthing his way up Shiro’s bare throat and nibbling at his ear.

Utterly mortifying. Or at least it ought to be—not all of Keith seems to be in agreement on the matter… 

With great pains and a considerable amount of nervous sweat, Keith carefully extricates himself from a peacefully slumbering Shiro and slowly rolls himself away, across their makeshift bed, and out of the cavern shelter.

He flees to the freshwater spring they’ve been using to bathe and takes himself in hand, working away the excitement his body had found in being so close to Shiro, and then scrubs away the sweat and faint guilt that still cling to his skin. They had fallen asleep at arm’s length, as usual. He had expected to wake in much the same manner.

Keith wrings out his hair and thanks whatever god might have spared him that Shiro had not been the first to wake, as he so often is. He isn’t sure he could’ve withstood the outcome, whether it was Shiro shoving him away in scandalized shock or awkwardly, politely assuring that he won’t hold that against Keith, either. As it is, Keith doesn’t know how he’ll be able to meet Shiro’s eyes for the rest of the day. And imagine if he had forsaken any semblance of control and put his mouth on Shiro!

And imagine if Shiro had been awake to feel it…

Keith’s skin heats again, all over, and by the time he slinks back to their camp from the mossy, flower-strewn spring, he worries he’ll look sun-scorched.

“Keith!” Shiro greets from where he sits by the fire, feeding it dry twigs and strips of bark. His smile is bright, not even a shadow of a cloud to dim his expression, and that much gives Keith some relief. “Here, I tried making some breakfast. It will not be as good as anything you cook, but…”

“It’ll be delicious,” Keith says, giving a shy, fleeing smile as he settles down opposite Shiro and starts poking at the conches bubbling away in a pot on the fire. He can feel Shiro’s eyes on him as he fishes them out and starts picking at the cooling meat within their shells, igniting his nerves anew.

“Does your mother ever come around? Or was it a one-time experience?” Shiro asks, and the abruptness of it makes Keith wonder if Shiro has been chewing on questions like these since last night. “Is she somewhere on the island with us, or…”

“No. But yes, she does come around. Frequently,” Keith adds. He points out the smoked squid and fish strung above their fire. “She’s brought a lot of our food, actually. And healing salves for you, along with pretty much every useful item we have. She… she’s been of great help.”

Shiro’s smile returns. “You mentioned that she brought us here, so that alone made me grateful. Food and necessities just make me like her more. In the abstract, I guess. How does she feel about humans?”

Keith can’t quite hold back a cheeky grin. “Well, she certainly had warm feelings for one human, wouldn’t you say?”

“Ah. Hah. Well, yes, I suppose so. I am more fishing to find out what she might think of me, though. Or what she might do to me if she were to learn that I once held her son at swordpoint as his ship sank,” he says, his dry laugh quickly tapering off.

“Even if she could muster a grudge over that, I wouldn’t let a thing happen to you, Shiro. But you’ve no need to worry, I think. You can even meet her, if you’d like. If you’re curious,” Keith adds, knowing full well that Shiro’s inquisitive nature must be eating him up inside.

“I would like that,” Shiro murmurs, letting his head hang to one side. “If you are certain that my presence would not be unwelcome.”

Keith nods. At this point, he doubts Krolia would ever try to harm Shiro. And if she did, Keith knows himself capable of acting accordingly; whatever common blood they might share, and however much he might still yearn for the mother he’d lacked for so long, Keith’s loyalty is firmly vested in Shiro alone.

They finish a quick breakfast of conch meat and sliced fruit, and then Shiro insists on washing up and changing into a fresh set of clothes from the scavenged ship. Once his hair is combed and neatly tied back by Keith’s nimble fingers, he gives a nervous grin and declares himself ready.

Under the late mid-morning sun, Keith leads Shiro down the narrow path to the secluded strip of beach where Krolia has returned time and again. The way is dappled with shade, at least, and the weight of Shiro’s steps behind him is always a comfort.

Along the beach ahead, Keith sees her—first a shadow moving under the waves, so like the sleek figure of a shark, before she crests above the rolling surf. Krolia glimmers in the mid-morning light, her figure nearly translucent along the edges, as if she really is just seawater given life and steady form. And he knows Shiro must’ve glimpsed her, too, given the way he suddenly sucks in a startled gasp.

“Keith,” Shiro whispers as the path they’re strolling down turns from soft, mulchy earth to loose sand. “Is that—that is your mother? She doesn’t look at all like the depictions of sirens in my books.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her that she doesn’t live up to your expectations.”

A hand seizes Keith’s wrist and gives a pleading tug. “Keith!”

“I’m only teasing,” Keith promises even as he immediately gives himself over to Shiro’s grip, halting in his tracks until Shiro sighs and releases his wrist, grumbling under his breath about being too nervous for games.

And, emboldened for reasons unknown, Keith catches Shiro’s hand before it can fall back by his side. His fingers slide into Shiro’s loose grasp, their pads skimming over the tender center of his palm. It’s mainly to reassure Shiro, he inwardly justifies—a physical reminder that Keith will not let him be lost or taken, no matter where they tread or who they meet. It’s repaying him for the way he had reached out and taken Keith’s hand last night, when he was wary and uncertain. And… and the gesture might also stem from Keith’s growing hunger to be close to Shiro, to feel his comforting warmth, to touch his skin and know that he is here, safe, alive. 

But whatever Keith’s reasons, Shiro doesn’t object to it. He allows Keith to take his hand and hold it, even curling his own fingers around Keith’s in turn.

Keith mourns that he barely has the time to enjoy it, short as the rest of their walk to Krolia is. Shiro’s grip grows firmer around his hand as their bare feet sink into wet sand and the foamy lather of waves gently lapping ashore. Keith runs the callused pad of his thumb along the side of Shiro’s hand in automatic answer and hopes that Shiro can’t feel the hummingbird thrumming of his pulse through his fingers.

They slow to a stop with the surf swirling around their calves, the cuffs of their breeches rolled high, and Keith doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Shiro’s spine so rigid nor his shoulders so stiff.

“Morning,” he says to Krolia, holding tighter to Shiro as she rises up out of the water, drawing herself to a full height that matches Shiro. “I brought someone to meet you. This is Captain Takashi Shirogane.”

Seawater courses down over her slick, purple-tinged skin like it pours from some unending font; her wet hair billows in the air for a moment, as if still underwater, before it cascades down around her shoulders in a sleek curtain. Her sharp eyes dart from Keith to Shiro to their linked hands, and there is a hint of a fang in her smile.

“Madam,” Shiro politely greets, dipping his head. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance.”

Krolia’s eyebrows lift in surprise, her gaze briefly flitting to Keith. He can only offer a smile back, as charmed by Shiro’s gentlemanly behaviour as his mother appears to be.

“Krolia,” she replies, introducing herself. “I have heard much about you from Keith, and all that you have done for him. You have my gratitude, Captain Shirogane.”

“Shiro serves me just as well, if you do not mind,” he offers back, a dusting of color settling across his cheeks. “And thank you, but it is only half as much as he has done for me. Without Keith, I would not be standing here right now.”

Keith shakes his head, equal parts hopeless and endeared. “The same could be said of me, if not for you.”

“I brought these for you,” Krolia says, interrupting before they can continue their back-and-forth. She hoists a sizeable tuna up by its tail and a dripping, woven net filled with blue crabs and prickly sea urchins. “I trust you two have been eating well?”

“I—y-yes, very well,” Shiro manages to stammer out, still gawking at the sudden gift of so much food. “I understand that we have you to thank for that, in large part. So, ah—thank you. We would have a much harder time catching ourselves even a tenth of this.”

Krolia bends to lay the fresh seafood in the gently bobbing surf at their feet. “Of course. I am simply glad for the chance to take care of my son in some manner, small as it is. And I am very pleased to finally meet you, Shiro. I imagine that learning of Keith’s lineage was quite a surprise and I am glad to see that it has left no rift between you.”

“No, no, of course not. A surprise? Yes, I cannot deny that much,” Shiro says, on the verge of a laugh. “But after the initial shock of sharing the sea with living, breathing sirens wore off, I found that it made perfectly good sense. Keith is… well, he can sail any ship like a phantom, pass through sinking graveyards untouched, lead man o’ wars to ruin. I had to meet him face-to-face to convince myself that he was a mortal man, and even then…” Shiro trails off, shrugs, tosses Keith a fleeting, sidelong look. “He is like a force of nature. Awe-inspiring to witness, fearsome to cross. His having siren blood felt like a puzzle piece that had been there all along, perfectly fitted to the rest of him. Why should I resent part of what makes him so extraordinary?”

Krolia’s eyes crease slightly at their corners. Keith, still clinging to Shiro’s hand through the deluge of compliments, burns from the tips of his ears down the back of his neck. It reminds him of those evenings spent eavesdropping on meetings between Shiro and the officers of other ships, listening in as his captain sang ten of his praises for every criticism thrown his way, wondering then—as he still does now, at this very moment—how he had ever won himself such a staunch defender in the first place. 

“Very good,” is all Krolia says, and Keith does think she looks rather satisfied with Shiro’s mild-mannered outburst. “It sets my heart at ease, knowing there is someone to help protect Keith even where I cannot tread.”

“I am happy to, although he doesn’t need much looking after,” Shiro answers. “Have you seen him with a sword? Downright intimidating.”

“I can step away,” Keith dryly interjects, “if you two would like to discuss me at length.”

Krolia merely laughs as she looks between the two of them. Shiro, for his part, looks slightly chastened. As if realizing that he might’ve spoken too freely—both for Keith’s comfort and his own—his smile settles into a familiar, well-practiced shape even as his skin blushes a shade worthy of carnelians.

“No, no, you’re not going anywhere, Keith. Far be it from me to monopolize time spent with your mother,” he murmurs, a there-and-gone glimmer of something faraway in the grey of his eyes. “If anyone here ought to step away, it is I.”

“What? No. I just was teasing again,” Keith says, tightening his hold of Shiro’s hand, “not trying to shoo you away.”

“I know. But now that we have been introduced, I think it best if I leave you two be again. For now, anyway. We haven’t been here all that long, after all, and you two have a lifetime spent apart to catch up on,” he says, smiling as he gives Keith’s hand a quick and reassuring squeeze just before letting go. “I can always join in later.”

Now, when Shiro meets Krolia’s level stare, it is only with a twinge of skittishness; most of that awkward stiffness he’d worn as they waded into the water has been shed in exchange for something like his usual, easygoing air. “Krolia, I am most pleased to have met you, but I have intruded long enough. We will have to continue comparing notes on Keith later, out of earshot.”

Krolia’s smile curls at its corners, wryly amused and faintly approving. “I will find you,” she calmly promises, to Shiro’s smiling but slightly anxious reception.

Keith can only stare as Shiro politely bows his head to Krolia and then stoops to pick up the woven net full of seafood, mumbling something about preparing their lunch. With a small farewell wave, Shiro backs his way out of the surf and onto the shore, leaving Keith lingering in the ocean with his mother.

“I like him,” Krolia comments as they watch Shiro retreat up the forest path together.

“Mm. Me too,” Keith absently agrees, his stare following Shiro—who must feel the weight of two sets of eyes upon him, for he turns just before venturing out of sight to give them one last wave. 

“I am surprised he was willing to let go of your hand,” Krolia says as she and Keith both raise their hands to return the gesture. “He held onto you like he feared he might be dragged out to sea, otherwise. Am I that intimidating?”

“Yes,” Keith answers honestly, returning his mother’s sharp-fanged smile in kind. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so nervous before—not even at swordpoint or in the jaws of raging hurricanes. But I think he enjoyed meeting you nonetheless.”

“Good,” Krolia murmurs under her breath. “Because I am looking forward to sitting him down for a longer conversation soon.”

“Why? It’s a miracle he hasn’t been scared off from me already,” Keith complains. “Don’t do anything that would make him reconsider that. And it should go without saying, but if you hurt him—”

“I will not harm him,” Krolia says, her tone mollifying in its calm, absolute certainty. “Barring some betrayal of you, of course.”

“Not even then,” Keith warns, wholly trusting that Shiro would never do him wrong. Not intentionally, if he could help it. Not in any way that was undeserved.

Krolia hums low, under her breath, her lids half lowered as she considers her son. And then her mouth parts into a sigh, a renewed smile curling at its corners. “He can really go on and on when it comes to singing your praises, can’t he?”

Keith sighs and shrugs a shoulder, red-faced at his mother’s overt wheedling regarding Shiro. “That’s just how he is,” he huffs, as flustered as ever by the man’s praise. “Optimistic. Supportive. Naturally charming.” 

Krolia hums, looking amused despite the arch to her narrow brows, and Keith can’t help but wonder aloud, “What, do you disagree?”

“Not at all,” Krolia says as she turns and wades a little deeper into the surf, beckoning Keith to follow. Her smile is easy, her gaze distant. “I was simply thinking that we might share a similar weakness in human men.”

* * *

“You look a great deal like her,” Shiro comments when Keith finally returns to their camp with feet gone pale and pruny from lingering so long in the sea. “Your mother.”

“Do I?” Keith questions.

Much of his own first reaction to Krolia had been shock and awe at her inhumanity, fearfully worried of recognizing the same fiendish features in himself. He’d spent most of the time he’d known her shying from comparisons that might reveal more than he wanted to know, reluctant to acknowledge that he truly was his mother’s son.

Now, though… he is curious to know how Shiro’s eye has measured him against Krolia.

Shiro leans back and squints at Keith, as if taking him in anew and double checking. “You do. It’s all there—the shape of your eyes, the height of your cheekbones, the curve of your nose, the set of your mouth. Seeing the two of you side by side, there really can’t be any doubt.”

“Seems like all I took from my father was his human appearance,” Keith snorts.

Shiro only smiles and keeps slicing open sea urchins, slow and careful as he insists on preparing a passable lunch for the both of them. 

That afternoon, they start the task of making the beached ship seaworthy once more. The work continues the next day, and the next, drawn out by their sparse toolkit and a lack of any pressing need to rush.

They fell trees to hew out new planks of wood, weave new ropes and nets, and stitch up the ripped sails and canvases found in the Interloper’s hold. It gives them a purpose to work toward together—eventual escape from the isolation of their remote little island—and Keith is unsurprised to discover that even hard labor is enjoyable when Shiro is sweating beside him.

Honestly… the isolation isn’t half-bad, either. There is no one to interrupt the two of them, no matter how late they stay up talking nor how long they spend trailing their way up and down the shore. There’s no standing on formality out here. No mention of rank, except in jest. Neither of them have to heed the dress codes or decorum that the navy calls for, either, so Keith takes to wearing his hair loose some days and Shiro takes to wandering around in unbuttoned shirts that flutter open in the slightest breeze. Barefoot and half-dressed, they’re largely free to do as they please. It reminds Keith of his brief command of the Songbird, but carefree and blessed with all the companionship he’ll ever need.

They settle into a routine before long.

After breakfast, while Shiro tidies up their camp, Keith pads down to the beach for his daily visit with Krolia.

She brings them more gifts to see them through their inevitable journey: glass jugs, watertight casks of beer, bits of metal not yet savaged by rust and rot. And then Keith will lie down in the surf beside her, basking in the feel of the ocean rolling around him, as they talk—for hours, sometimes. Often about his father, at least to start, but gradually Keith finds himself telling Krolia about his lonely childhood, his bloodsoaked life at sea, and the comfortable sense of belonging he had finally found at Shiro’s side.

And though Shiro makes a point of leaving Keith and Krolia to do their bonding alone, he occasionally accompanies Keith down to the shore to pay his respects, chatting with Krolia about their recent endeavors before heading off for some time on his own. 

But for all of that, it isn’t uncommon for Keith to catch the two of them alone, either—talking about him, presumably, or else finding some other topics on which to bond. He spies them along different patches of beach or rocky shore, Krolia half-hidden in clouded waters while Shiro wades knee deep out to meet her. She plies him with fresh seaweed and rust-covered astronomical tools, which Shiro excitedly shows off to Keith when he returns.

And so it is of little surprise one late afternoon when Keith notices Shiro walking back from a watery inlet with a length of sword in hand—another gift, no doubt, raised out of the water by Krolia’s clawed hand. 

“What do you have there?” Keith calls out as he drops the pile of gathered driftwood in his arms to the sand and lifts the hem of his shirt to wipe away the sweat dotted along his forehead.

“A cutlass, courtesy of your mother,” Shiro says, grinning. He unsheathes the blade and flourishes it, his movements only a hair clumsy from a couple of months without practice. “And not in terrible condition, all things considered. I wonder where on earth she found it?” he muses out loud, turning the sword this way and that as he admires it.

Keith snorts. “An unlucky officer on some not-too-far ship would be my guess.”

“Ah. Oh. Right. I forget sometimes,” Shiro murmurs, his cheeks a little pink at the reminder that Krolia is, for all of her gentleness toward them, still a siren of terrifying power, and not at all shy about luring others to a watery end.

It doesn’t seem to put Shiro off of the cutlass, though.

Keith watches as Shiro goes through a few practice steps with his new sword, testing its weight with each swing and lunge. In time, he starts pacing a wide ring around the man, a curl to his lips as he admires Shiro’s well-ingrained form and traditional style.

“It’s been a very long time since we sparred,” Keith says, a sudden and sweet nostalgia blooming in the back of his mind, clouding his thoughts.

“Too long,” Shiro agrees at once.

It was always a challenge to clear space on the deck of the Kerberos when they wanted to test their swords against each other, and even more so when every living soul aboard was eager to crowd around to watch. Sparring hand-to-hand was easier to pull-off in tight quarters but carried its own set of tricky circumstances, especially while serving on a royal ship of the navy—namely, the notion of a baseborn former-pirate leaving the captain with a black-eye didn’t really sit well with anyone.

But Shiro was adamant in his desire to hone himself against someone who knew how to fight dirty, whether with a weapon or barehanded, and Keith could never deny him much of anything at all. And while their mock swordfights always carried a certain control and refinement, largely thanks to Shiro’s expert command of the blade, barefisted brawling can only be messy—at least the way Keith grew up doing it, anyway.

“We could fix that,” Keith lightly suggests, his fingers already strumming along the grip of his dagger.

Shiro grins toothily, spinning the fine new sword in his hand as he looks Keith up and down. “A cutlass like this against your little dagger doesn’t really seem like a fair fight, does it?”

“Perhaps you could use the advantage,” Keith teases as he draws out his own blade and gives it a short flip into the air, deftly catching it again as it falls. At Shiro’s soft, mock-offended hmph, he laughs and adds, “Would you like to see something my mother showed me how to do? Something magical?”

“Depends,” Shiro says, still smiling as he plants the point of his sword in the sand and lets it rest there. “Are you going to turn me into a crab or something of the like?”

“No,” Keith tells him, emphatic. “I’m going to do this.”

He drags the dripping pads of his index and middle fingers along the flat of the blade, awakening a line of starlight-faint, unfamiliar symbols that are nearly imperceptible to the naked eye. They brighten under his purposeful touch, flaring with a milky light as the metal under his fingertips changes, the dagger’s blade turning to a silky, watery quicksilver that stretches and curves before it solidifies once more into something sharp-edged and severe.

It reminds Keith of Krolia’s own mercurial nature, able to glide along the waves in one moment, her form mixed with the sea, and the next to stand on two solid legs, her fluidity briefly traded for something less mutable. And that makes sense, considering that this dagger had belonged to her for ages before she had seen fit to entrust it to him.

“Keith, I—that really is magical!” Shiro says, drawing close enough to touch his fingers to the wickedly curved length of the fully awoken sword. “How…?”

Keith shrugs. “You would have to ask her for a proper explanation. I only know how to make it happen.”

“No small feat,” Shiro says approvingly, glancing back over his shoulder as he retreats to pull his cutlass from the sand. He gives the blade another spin and adjusts his grip around it. “So, are you up for a round or two? Or are you shy of taking another sound thrashing, like the one I gave you in Karthulian Bay?”

Keith answers by taking a lunge toward Shiro, his dagger-turned-sword flashing in the afternoon sunlight. His whirling strike is easily blocked, his blade turned aside. It’s a gentle rebuff, all things considered, and Keith’s feet sink into soft sand as he changes his stance and thrusts forward once more.

Shiro is an unparalleled defensive fighter, a bulwark even without a shield, his swift parries jarring each of Keith’s blows to a resounding halt. He bides his time, patiently waiting for a sliver of an opening, and only then does he bring his cutlass around in a punishing sweep that Keith has to drop low to avoid.

“Are you aiming to take my head off?” Keith teases as he springs back up and forces his way in close, his own sword raised high, its tip aimed at Shiro’s broad chest.

“You’re too quick for that,” Shiro scoffs as he deftly knocks Keith’s sword off-mark and weaves to one side, laughing.

On his stretch of barren, open beach, without any curious bystanders in the way nor judgmental eyes mincing apart his every move, it is easier for Keith to give himself over to his instincts. It is a pleasure to fight without dire cause for it, free to test his mettle against Shiro for sheer thrill alone. There is no desperation to unsteady his hand, no anger to cloud his mind, no chilling readiness to kill in his heart—just a desire to impress, whether he is victorious or not.

Getting to witness Shiro in the throes of swordwork is a hefty bonus, though. It reminds Keith that they are far more similar to one another than not, in many of the ways that matter most.

That caring nature of his belies the utter ruin Shiro can bring when he wishes to, whether with a man o’ war or a blade or his bare hand. The hunting look in those steely eyes is like a hook sunken low and deep into Keith’s insides, drawing out the most inopportune feelings of animalistic delight. Every sound he makes—disappointed grunts when he swings wide, the faint rumblings of laughter when Keith outmaneuvers him, the roughened panting for breath—coaxes Keith’s heart to beat quicker. 

Shiro is sun-soaked and half-dressed, the waist of his trousers nearly low enough to show his navel. His body is filled back out with muscle, his skin temptingly smooth but for where it is scarred. He is handsome as ever with his hair fading to white quicker than leaves turn in autumn, and even more striking when he moves with such enviable skill and clear purpose.

The self-control Keith has cultivated within himself wanes thin as Shiro grins and presses his own attack, fierce and just shy of merciless, and Keith isn’t sure which he wants more: to drop to his knees in front of Shiro and offer willing surrender, or to bear the man down to the ground and stake an inarguable victory over him.

Keith picks the latter. He lets the agitation prickling under his skin and the heat in his veins fuel him, striking quick and furious as the lash of a barbed whip. It helps that the sword in his hands is unnaturally light for its length, slashing through the air with the gentle hiss of a well-slung arrow. In Keith’s hand, it maneuvers like a piece that belongs to him, an extension of his very body. Its blade finds Shiro’s every time, the clatter of tempered metal ringing out again and again and again, driving the other man back one step at a time.

And Shiro, usually so attentive about minding the battlefield and controlling what ground he gives up, is forced to give way to Keith’s furious onslaught. He is pressed at every turn, afforded fewer and fewer opportunities to shape the fight in his own favor. Even as he continues to deflect Keith’s thrusts with timely parries, Shiro is backed further into a metaphorical corner, up the beach and into stringy weeds— 

And then right against a tree.

Shiro grunts as his shoulder blades meet uneven bark and unbudging wood, left with nowhere to turn as Keith advances in one swift lunge. The curved tip of that siren blade falls right at the hollow of his throat, its edge kissing against Shiro’s skin with every winded heave of his chest. His own cutlass remains gripped in the hand that falls to his side, shoulders drooping in unspoken defeat.

And the open shirt hanging off of them droops a little further, too, the sweat-soaked fabric clinging fast to the rounded muscle of Shiro’s upper arms. 

Shiro himself is a man undone—locks of his hair fallen haphazardly to frame his well-chiseled face, his eyes half-lidded as he lowers his gaze to the sword laid across his chest, his throat flexing and his full lips parted to draw in heavy, hurried breaths. A thin sheen of sweat makes his sun-kissed skin glisten; a rosy flush accompanies it, color blooming over sloping cheeks and rounding the tips of his ears.

Keith’s lips and mouth feel suddenly, wickedly dry. For a moment, he can barely keep his knees from buckling underneath him, much less speak in full words. 

“Yield?” he finally manages, his own voice crackly to his ears. He tries for a playful smile and ends up swallowing thickly instead.

Shiro doesn’t answer right away, instead casting him a hazy look from under the shadow of those long, coal-black lashes. His mouth closes, a tongue prodding into his cheek as he considers it. His lips stick a little as they part again.

“What if I refuse?” Shiro poses instead, something like defiance creeping into those low tones. He makes no move to challenge the blade still raised against him, but neither does he drop his own cutlass.

“If you refuse to yield?” Keith questions, shifting his weight from one foot to another. Pettily competitive as Shiro can sometimes be, he’s never before outright refused to recognize Keith besting him. “Then I suppose we’re stuck here like this. Forever. You, me, and that tree.”

There is a soft thunk as the back of Shiro’s head meets the tree flush behind him. His throat flexes. One corner of his mouth twitches in the fleeting impression of a smile. “That would be fine by me, actually.”

It is a little frustrating.

Keith exhales heavily through his nose and lets the very tip of his sword trail featherlight over Shiro’s skin, right under the dip between his clavicles. Rushing blood still pounds in his ears, urging him not to back down, however impetuous Shiro might be. He is too long pent-up to let Shiro play coy and smart-mouth his way out of a clear and decisive loss.

With a flick of his wrist, Keith lifts his sword and angles it anew. Quick as the scorch of lightning on a mast, he lunges into mortal striking distance, closing the lofty gap between them into a heated splinter of space. The sword’s upper edge slices into the tree behind Shiro, shaving off bark and fine moss, while the lower third of the blade is drawn up to graze Shiro’s throat.

At once, Shiro’s chin snaps up and his spine goes taut. The cutlass in his hand drops to the sparse grasses at his feet. And with his neck and shoulders pressed so firmly into unyielding wood, the rest of his body—his chest, his belly, his hips—bows out slightly to compensate.

The air between them changes, like the breath of a billows sending tiny sparks to scorching heights. Keith means to enjoin Shiro to yield once more, but this time his words truly fail him. Standing this close to Shiro, only their heavy breaths and the width of a blade between them, Keith can feel that subtle arch that moves through the other man and all the places where it brings their bodies to meet.

Keith loses the thread of his thoughts, some sweeping current of pining thirst carrying him away instead. It’s dangerous, like hovering on the event horizon of a whirlpool that will draw him right down to some crushing point in the depths of the deepest trench. Keith stutters on air as he watches a bead of sweat roll slow down Shiro’s temple as they both stand as still as their wanting lungs will allow. The sword in his hand nearly wavers.

And just as Keith gains enough stock of himself to recognize the need to disentangle himself—to withdraw his sword and step back to breathe clear air, and then maybe vent his frustrations through some hand-to-hand—a hand grips at his waist and holds him fast.

The woven cotton of Keith’s shirt bunches under Shiro’s thumb as it strokes back and forth over Keith’s trim waist, along his bottom ribs. His touch sears the tender skin underneath, tingling like the gentlest afterburn of rum or whisky.

The sound of Keith’s own breathing swells to fill his ears, that familiar rush of blood roaring just under it. When he blinks, it’s with the slow stupor of someone coming out of slumber, not quite certain what is dream and what is real. He’s pretty sure that is Shiro’s hand on him, though, with strong fingers curled around his flank. He’s pretty sure it is neither innocent nor careless. And it feels an awful lot like an unspoken invitation, if not something stronger.

“Shiro,” Keith murmurs, the huskiness of his own voice unfamiliar.

He eases his blade away from Shiro’s throat, any thought of their sparring match fading down to nought at all. Withdrawn, the sword quietly reverts to its shorter, stouter dagger form as it is rather carelessly dropped to the ground at their feet.

“I hope you don’t object,” Shiro says, the column of his newly freed throat flexing with a resolute swallow. The hand on Keith’s waist gives a purposeful squeeze before sinking to his hip, making sure his meaning is known.

Keith promptly forgets how to breathe. His heart hammers within his ribcage with the frantic tempo of a snare drum. Shiro’s words sound through his mind like the reverberating echo of a heavy church bell. Of course he doesn’t object. How could he? Even this much is more than he had ever expected to receive.

As a measure of silence trickles by, though, Shiro’s blush grows, deepens, swallows him whole. His heavy, intent stare softens under the shadow of blinking, fluttering lashes. “O-Or have I deeply misjudged—” 

Keith hooks a hand around the back of Shiro’s neck and surges upward, planting his mouth on Shiro’s before that miserably doubtful thought can finish.

The shock on those parted lips melts away as Keith moves against them, hungry to taste every bit of Shiro that is allowed to him. Under their slightly rough, weathered skin, Shiro’s lips are pleasantly soft, their fullness taking the brunt of Keith’s overenthusiasm. He can hardly help himself, though. Keith rises up on his toes too quickly and it knocks their jaws together. Their teeth click. His incisors scrape lightly over Shiro’s saliva-slick skin, struggling to find the purchase to hold their kisses the way he wants. 

And all it takes is a patient, accommodating little tilt of Shiro’s head for their mouths to slot together properly, the tip of Shiro’s nose poking into Keith’s cheek each time he ducks his head down a little further to deepen the kiss. He tastes faintly of seaspray and the wine they’d recovered from the beached ship. He smells of salt and sweat. And his tongue is every bit as deft as Keith had surreptitiously imagined.

Keith’s fingers curl around Shiro’s nape, desperate to keep the other man close. To keep him from slipping away again—ever—but least of all now, when Keith thinks that being parted from him for even a minute would truly drive him into a mindless frenzy.

The thought of kissing never held much appeal, until Shiro. Many things he’d once dismissed as simply not for him have found new meaning in Shiro, in fact—five years ago, Keith would never have imagined being willing to swim to the ends of the earth for another person, to fight for them, to die with them. He would never have pictured himself yearning, much less for a man well above his station. Love of every kind always eluded him, and so Keith had made himself strong enough to live without the expectation of it.

And then, well… Shiro.

The hand planted on Keith’s hip migrates to the small of his back, palm flat against his spine. Shiro pulls him in closer, until Keith’s hips and belly are firmly flush against his own, pinned there under the weight of his touch.

While gently clasping his teeth around Shiro’s bottom lip, Keith arches into it. Every second of contact with Shiro ignites something more urgent and unquenchable within him. Under the confines of his loose, billowing shirt and roughspun breeches—which now feel far too restrictive—his skin is aflame.

In an attempt to sate himself, he presses himself against Shiro with smothering tenacity. Keith wedges his left thigh between Shiro’s, nudging them apart to make room for himself. His palms travel up the rounded curves of Shiro’s chest, over his broad shoulders, and under the fabric still loosely draped around Shiro’s torso. Keith is lean, but he’s strong, too; he wields that strength almost carelessly as he throws himself up against Shiro, leaving not a sliver of space between them.

The tree at Shiro’s back gives a shake as he pushes Shiro harder into its smooth bark, the leafy branches above swaying. He groans into Keith’s mouth at the force of it, the sound trailing into a low keen as Keith’s body rolls into his, frantic with need. The friction between them is like a monsoon after too many months without a drop of rain, running roughshod over everything left in its path. It’s more than Keith can bear but still somehow not nearly enough, and Keith can do nothing but desperately chase relief.

There’s no grace to any of it. Not at this point. Not with Keith as worked up as he is, keyed to an absolute frenzy by the soft moans Shiro makes every time they break to gasp for breath. He hikes up his right leg in an effort to jam his hips more fully against Shiro’s, utterly shameless as he works to half-straddle Shiro where he stands. Shiro must not mind it either, given how his hand comes down to grip Keith’s raised thigh and keep him steady.

The new angle works for Keith, for a while. He bites down on his own lip while Shiro kisses at the corners of his mouth, his jaw, his squeezed-shut eyes. But all the frantic bucking of his hips only gets Keith so far, even with Shiro helping to pull him higher, firmer against himself. With a frustrated growl, Keith settles back down on both heels, his arms looped tight and unyielding around the muscled slopes of Shiro’s shoulders.

Amid his own bubbling, overexcited frustration, Keith feels the shape of Shiro’s smile against his lips. Only a moment after, there are fingers worming their way in between the press of their bodies, followed by the knuckles that gently dig their way into the softness of Keith’s belly. Shiro’s hand has to work to wedge itself between them, fighting to wriggle deeper down and in. 

And as it forces its way down into the tight juncture of their hips, Keith lets out a low whine. He can’t help but grind himself against the back of Shiro’s firm hand until the man lets out an exasperated huff into his ear.

“You do know I need this hand when we’re done, don’t you?” Shiro pants out, fighting against Keith’s wanton writhing as he struggles to undo the buttons on his breeches. “I only have the one left.”

Shiro must succeed in his endeavor, because Keith registers two things in quick succession: an obscene groan that ripples through Shiro like he is in the throes of ecstasy, and a firm, heated, slightly sticky shape that gently prods against Keith’s abdomen as he plasters himself against Shiro.

And the realization of what it is—of how Shiro himself is no less eager or aroused—is almost enough to undo Keith on the spot. He winds his arms tighter around Shiro’s shoulders and buries his face into the man’s neck. “S-Sorry. I’m just…”

“I know. I have you,” Shiro assures, his nose and lips buried in the crowning fluff of Keith’s unruly hair.

The backs of curled fingers make a pointed stroke up against Keith, stroking the aching hardness still tucked away in his own breeches. Then Keith feels a slight tug on the cotton-lined wool, a twist as Shiro roughly undoes the buttons. Lightly calloused fingers fumble the fabric aside and then take Keith in hand.

Keith’s lashes flutter at the sensation of fitting snugly in Shiro’s fist, almost dizzy at the intensity of such a sudden and direct touch. He arches into it, strung taut as a bowstring as he clings to Shiro with the desperation of a man fearful of being washed out to sea. It is nothing like the feel of his own hand—slender and rough-palmed and brusque with himself, always rushing to find release and be done.

Shiro feels him out with sinful patience—or as best he can with Keith half-wound around him, arms and legs trembling, somehow still not near enough Shiro for his liking. Between the crushing press of their bodies, he manages a few slow, pumping strokes. His thumb traces its way up the underside of Keith’s length and then lingers at its tip, rubbing slick little circles until Keith thinks he’s going to see stars in the daytime.

And then Shiro’s hand unfurls around him and withdraws, that perfect pressure dissipating so quickly that Keith sighs out in disappointment, bereft. It doesn’t last but a moment, though.

A little jolt courses up Keith’s spine as Shiro’s heavy, twitching cock slides against his own, its head nudging at Keith’s belly through the thin fabric that separates them. It feels bigger, to match the rest of Shiro’s impressive stature. More insistent, too, if such a thing were possible. And as Keith nips needily at Shiro’s mouth and levers up onto his toes to better rut himself against Shiro, he receives another helping hand.

This time, Shiro’s fingers curl around them both, squeezing Keith’s shaft against his. Even the slightest movement rubs them together, skin slippery with precum.

And all together, it is enough to bodily swing Keith right over the edge: Shiro’s palm curled around him, the swollen heat of Shiro’s length heavy against him, the body flush with his own, the lips dragging over his cheek and temple, the heated breath on his skin, the voice calling his name.

Keith’s teeth sink into the rounded muscle of Shiro’s shoulder as he comes, his arms coiled tight around Shiro and his hip stuttering into every last, weakening thrust. Shiro follows just a second behind, judging by the winded groan that falls from his lips and the liquid heat that spreads over Keith’s stomach, wetting the fabric of his shirt and plastering it to his skin.

The mess between them is strikingly apparent as they part, sticky strands of milky white stretching between them, connecting their softening shafts, between Shiro’s fingers as he flexes his hand.

Staggering where he stands, Keith shakily pulls off his own soiled shirt and uses it to wipe away the spent seed dripping between Shiro’s fingers and smeared across his bare stomach. It feels just as intimate as everything to come before, or perhaps even more so. After cleaning himself up as best he can, Keith tucks himself away and buttons up his breeches, while Shiro does the same for himself.

Shiro, still leaning heavily against the tree behind him, exhales a heavy, relaxed puff of air. “I yield, by the way.”

“Oh, good,” Keith pants out, although his mind has long since wandered a thousand miles from the outcome of their first spar in ages. He feels feverish and wobbly on his feet, like he’s overindulged in good drink. As utterly spent as if he’d swam three miles. Half-dazed from satisfaction, while somehow still nursing an appetite for more.

But as the exuberance of the moment fades and Keith’s spirits drifts back down from the perilous heights they had reached, a quiet, gentle awkwardness puts down shoots between them.

Keith is no stranger to lacking for suitable words, but after getting a taste of his wildest, most closely-held desires, he is at a total loss for anything to say. Or anything to do, other than more of that. Because even freshly spent, he is subject to vivid thoughts of kissing Shiro again, of touching him with abandon, of pinning him down as the sun sets and night falls over them.

So Shiro is the first to speak again, in some more collected manner.

“For as long as I have spent thinking of—of doing something of that nature, with you,” he says, his breath hitching as he slowly lowers himself to the ground, legs trembling under the strain, “I was so doubtful I would ever act on it. Or have the opportunity to, rather.”

There’s a faint astonishment in the way Shiro says it, a heady disbelief that echoes Keith’s own awe at what had just come to pass between them. To wait so long, to hold oneself in such tight restraint, and then be given release? There’s no relief quite like it. Keith’s heart quickens once more, captivated by the thought of Shiro yearning for him, dwelling on what he might like to do with Keith.

“I am acquainted with the feeling,” he says, slowly going down on his knees before settling into a loose, cross-legged pose beside Shiro. The shade of the tree is welcome, given the heat of the afternoon and all their exertions, and the near proximity to Shiro is even better.

Keith clears his throat. Almost idly, he adds, “But if it so frequently crossed your mind, you could always have come to me and said you wanted to—” he pauses, searching for a delicate term less likely to offend Shiro’s good upbringing, “—to have amorous congress. Or anything else at all, really.”

Shiro’s eyebrows shoot upward, his dreamy sort of exhaustion giving way to something almost playfully amused. “That simple, hm?” Then his teasing smile softens. More to himself than Keith, he murmurs, “I would have liked it to be that simple.”

Keith hums, low and mildly discontent. Not with Shiro, of course, but with the heavy reality of his words.

It wouldn’t have been easy, no. Romantic entanglements between officers and crew are grounds for all manner of disciplinary action in the navy, and secrets rarely last long within the cramped confines of a ship. A well-connected gentleman captain like Shiro being caught carrying on with a subordinate would be scandal enough, but Keith? A socially-inferior former pirate of terribly ill-repute? Both of their careers in the royal navy would be as good as dashed on the rocks. And while the public scorn wouldn’t have even scratched Keith’s thick hide, it would have easily rendered Shiro’s prospects unsalvageable.

“I would never have acted in any way I thought would jeopardize everything you had worked toward, least of all for my own gratification,” Shiro tells him, an endearing little furrow appearing in his brow. “Especially given how you came to trust me, in time. Made no secret of how absolutely little you cared for the opinion of anyone but me, really,” he almost laughs.

“Still true,” Keith chimes in, resting his cheek on his curled fist.

Shiro closes his eyes, those long lashes fanned against his rose-tinged skin, and smiles. The curve of his lips gradually softens, but never quite fades. “That was never something I took lightly, Keith. Never something I wanted to risk ruining,” Shiro says, and Keith knows that worry all too well. “And I was your captain.”

“You are my captain,” Keith quickly interjects. “And you will always be so.”

A wince briefly pinches Shiro’s fine features. Skeptical, he asks, “Even if I have no ship to my name and the navy considers me a ghost?”

“Even so. And you’ll have a ship of your own again, soon. A spry little cutter. It’ll be more yours than any commission from the navy ever was,” Keith promises.

Shiro huffs, deeply affected by the sentiment, and he is just as charming when overwhelmed and unsure of how to respond. The loose locks of white hair that frame his sweaty face sway as he dips his head and looks aside, shying from view.

And Keith can’t let him off so easily—can’t resist nudging this bashful Shiro a little further and wresting more compelling details from him.

“So… after so many months on the Kerberos and a number of weeks on this island, what made you finally choose a sparring match to make your stand? And in such a manner? ‘What if I refuse?’” he scoffs, all gentle teasing as he gently prods his elbow into Shiro’s side. “You’re lucky I didn’t drop you to the ground in a chokehold before you had a chance to make a move.”

Shiro sighs, a tinge overdramatic. When he braves another look at Keith, it is with a sheepish expression.

“Well. It was not my most thoroughly thought-out decision, no, but I do not regret getting swept up in the moment. Sword in hand, you looked every bit like a beautiful Fury who only had eyes for me, and it reminded me of first meeting you. Which made me a little desperate, I suppose.” As Keith’s ears go warm and his stomach flutters with keen, flattered excitement, Shiro adds, “And it is—I would not call myself well-versed in propositioning people, so...”

Shiro shrugs his shoulders in a vague gesture, as if that should make his meaning clear.

Keith nods. “Used to everyone else just throwing themselves at you instead, I’m sure.”

“You know full well that isn’t it,” Shiro argues, stern despite the blush creeping higher up his cheeks. “I am not as popular as you think, for one, and my attentions have always been set on the service rather than romantic pursuits. Until a certain pirate of notable fame, that is.”

Keith’s heart practically stumbles over itself in its desperation to beat harder, quicker.

“The Red Shrike?” he ventures. His smile fades at its corners as his gaze dips to the ugly mark peeking out from under the loose collar of Shiro’s undone shirt. Hesitantly, Keith raises a hand and brings its loosely curled fingers to hover near the rise and fall of Shiro’s chest. “Even though he gave you this?”

It’s the first time Keith has seen the scar he’d left this plainly, this close. On the infrequent occasions he had glimpsed Shiro in a state of undress—washing down above deck, in the sweltering heat of the doldrums, having new wounds stitched up after battle—Keith had never let his eye linger too long. It was, by that point, a less than sterling reminder of the way he had once treated someone who now meant the world to him.

Shiro glances down at that sharp line of raised, discolored tissue, so particular among the rest of the many old scars that cross his body up and down. And then he takes Keith’s hand and draws it closer, pressing Keith’s narrow palm right over the mark etched into his shoulder.

“I think of it as a little memento of our first meeting,” Shiro says, his voice low and rich in ways that make Keith’s insides melt. The warmth of his flesh bleeds into Keith’s calloused fingertips, strong and supple under his touch; his hand fully covers Keith’s, his palm warm and slightly damp where it presses against the back of Keith’s knuckles. “And a small price to pay for the prize of getting you. Of all the scars I have, this is the only one I like. The only one I would keep, if given the choice.”

Keith has no idea where to begin answering that. He watches the rise and fall of Shiro’s chest—feels it under his palm, comforted by the steadiness of it. Though his own gaze is downcast, Keith feels the quiet weight of Shiro’s stare on him like a down-stuffed blanket draped over his shoulders; it lingers as he slides his hand out from under Shiro’s and trails his fingers down the bare curves of Shiro’s chest, over the faintly tacky spots where missed seed had started to dry on Shiro’s belly, across the divots and raised scars left by hands other than Keith’s.

“You got this for my sake,” Shiro says in time, raising his hand to cup it gingerly over Keith’s scarred cheek.

Keith leans into the touch, eyes slipping shut. He did, and he would do it again for Shiro in a heartbeat. Then, now, at any moment to come. A hundred times over. It is indeed a small price to pay to find the man who carries for him all the meaning in the world. The flesh has long since shed its rust-colored scabs and given way to fresh, slightly darker scar tissue; like the scar that bridges Shiro’s nose, it will never be anything less than distinctly noticeable.

“I would say we are at least even,” Shiro whispers, his thumb tracing its way up the crest of Keith’s cheekbone.

Keith’s eyes flutter open. The first and only thing he sees is Shiro, his eyes like the grey of overcast seas and his expression all softhearted patience—waiting for Keith to say or do anything, if he wishes to. 

“I love you, you know,” Keith blurts before trepidation and self-doubt can cut him short once more. He feels no less vulnerable in baring himself so honestly, but with the nakedness comes a sweeping relief that leaves Keith feeling lighter than a sea breeze.

“I had started to suspect,” Shiro answers, although the sparkle of surprise in his widened eyes is unmistakable. He seems to forget himself for a moment, dazedly meeting Keith’s breathless stare, before startling back to himself. In a sudden hurry, his hand seeks one of Keith’s and clasps it tight. “My own feelings are no less profound, even left unspoken. I love you. I sometimes wondered if I had from the moment I first saw you, in some small part that grew and grew.”

“Love at first sight?” Keith questions, faintly incredulous. He leans in closer to Shiro, his eyebrows pointedly rising. “Shiro.”

“I have no defense except that you left quite an impression on me,” Shiro murmurs, laughing when Keith’s gaze inevitably drops to the scar buried in his shoulder once more.

“I’m not sure the navy should be sending such hopelessly romantic captains out to sea. Seems dangerous.” Keith draws his other hand down to fold over Shiro’s, soothing over his knuckles and strong, curled fingers. He smiles as Shiro’s laugh meets him once more, softer and lighter than air. 

Keith himself cannot pinpoint the exact moment his heart turned toward Shiro anymore than he could mark the line where one sea gives way to another. Captain Takashi Shirogane had been a loathed enemy, once, as foreign as the thought seems. Now, he is worth more to Keith than life itself, than the world itself. And the bond Keith has with him is too deep to plumb and return with clear, precise answers, at this point. They’re too intertwined, he thinks. His memories—even the early ones—are all colored with the love he holds for Shiro now, tinged with the affection he wishes he could have shown the man sooner.

“I came close to telling you when we were lost at sea,” Keith tells him, still squeezing Shiro’s hand between his own, “and I thought we’d both shortly be dead. And after Krolia brought us here, I was too grateful to have you back to risk estranging you right after.”

Shiro nods along, quietly understanding, but says nothing while Keith chews his lip and gathers more words.

“Then finding out that I am not all human… half-siren, I had a whole new host of worries,” Keith breathes out, reminded of how devastating and alienating the knowledge had felt at first blush, even if he has since settled into it with some comfort. “Namely, that you might fear that I had enchanted you somewhere along the way, as I feared that I had.”

Keith plays with Shiro’s fingers, as much because he can as out of nervous habit, seeking to console himself at the mere mention of something that had given him such anxiety. He winds his slimmer fingers up through Shiro’s and admires how much smoother the older man’s hands are—not entirely uncalloused, no, but spared from the years and years of hard labor that most seafarers regularly endure.

“If it comforts you to know, such a suspicion never even crossed my mind,” Shiro tells him, holding his ground when Keith shoots him a disbelieving little glare. “It didn’t. And it never would have. I would know if I had been under some sorcery to alter my opinion of you, and I most assuredly was not.”

“How would you know?” Keith asks, any lingering misgivings over the topic cast away in favor of consternation at Shiro’s unfounded certainty.

Shiro’s strong brows draw inward. He shrugs his shoulders, and mildly, confidently states, “I have my reasons.”

“Which are?”

“I did think about it,” Shiro immediately insists. “Quite a lot.”

Keith inclines his head, waiting, and Shiro pauses to shift closer to Keith, as if being nearer to him is a crucial component of the explanation.

“Well, one would imagine that a spell meant to bewitch someone into mindless ardor would by necessity cast a pall over many of their real memories and feelings. Something to gloss over any bits that could break the illusion, so to speak. Either by altering perception or causing one to forget…” he reasons out loud. “But I have shared close quarters with you for two years, Keith. I know how you snore when you’re drunk. I have smelled you after two weeks in the doldrums with no rain. I have seen your temper in full swing on more than one occasion, and I still vividly recall what it felt like to be on the receiving end of your blade.”

Shiro lays it all out without a drop of malice or misgiving in his voice. Keith, however, almost reflexively shrinks in on himself at the mention of jabbing a dagger into Shiro’s still-healing shoulder—and the way the pain had twisted Shiro’s features, and how fiercely he’d had to fight back. 

“I know you, Keith, part and parcel,” Shiro continues, his low, velvety voice gently pulling Keith from the mire of that memory. “As you know me, faults and all. And long before you ever let me hear your voice, I had always… that is, my feelings for you are quite constant. Like the pole star. No magic trickery involved. None required, even. I am very comfortably assured of it.”

“Oh.” Heat races through Keith’s veins and scorches its way over his cheeks. Not knowing what to say to such a declaration, he instead softly teases, “I seem to recall that the doldrums left you smelling just as ripe.”

Keith softly teases, not knowing what else to say. He also remembers the silver lining of those weeks spent drifting near the equator, as windless and dismal as they’d been: watching his captain shed his navy coat jacket and undo the laces of his white, sweat-soaked shirt, handsomely disheveled as he fruitlessly attempted to mitigate the sweltering heat. 

“Exactly my point,” Shiro agrees. “How could we have put up with each other so well for that miserably humid, utterly rank fortnight if not for pure affection?”

“Fair enough,” Keith relents, still so warm that his hands begin to sweat around Shiro’s. “I suppose I would have to love you to volunteer to give myself hand cramps transcribing astronomical texts for you.”

“Really? You didn’t enjoy it? I find transcription very relaxing.”

“I found sitting with you in your cabin very relaxing,” Keith mumbles back. “Even in the doldrums. And especially in the icy north.”

“Mm. I am eternally grateful that you enjoy my company as much as I enjoy yours. It makes the deserted island living more than bearable. A holiday, almost,” Shiro sighs.

“Mm,” Keith agrees, half-distracted. He finally lets go of Shiro’s hand. “I find myself liking it better all the time.”

“Care to, uh, head back to the camp before we do anything else?” Shiro says, voice dropped to a whisper. Helplessly, he nods toward the not-so-distant surf. “I am suddenly very aware that we are within eyeshot of the ocean…”

“Oh.” Keith can’t help but give a little grimace and hope that Krolia is off in deeper waters rather than protectively patrolling the shallows around their island. He gathers up both of their blades. “That might be best.”

He stands first, groaning, and then clasps Shiro’s wrist to help pull him up to his feet.

It feels shockingly natural to plant his palms against Shiro’s front as he wobbles on weak knees and taxed thighs, steadying his heavier frame. More natural still to cling stickily close, his breath puffing against Shiro’s clavicle, practically embracing in the dappled shade.

“Maybe we ought to stop the spring on the way,” Shiro suggests, carefully peeling himself away from Keith and the still-damp, sticky front of his shirt. “Get ourselves cleaned up before we turn in.”

Keith glances back behind them, where the sun is already beginning to dip out of sight, and makes a little frown. Even if they make a direct trek back to their homely little cavern, it will likely be pushing dusk by the time they arrive. Any delay—even a highly tempting and understandable desire to wash up—will have them wandering their way back in the dark.

“I think it’s a bit too late for that,” Keith mumbles, a new tide of blush returning to his cheeks at the thought he dare not add: he hopes and intends to make just as much of a mess of Shiro tonight, in the privacy of their shelter, so why bother, really? “We can do it come morning, though.”

But when he takes Shiro’s hand and gives him a gentle tug, the other man stubbornly refuses to budge.

“Keith. I am your captain, you said? Always and forever?”

Keith arches a brow. “That is what I said, yes.”

“Well, I hate to pull rank,” Shiro says in a tone that does not sound the slightest bit remorseful or reluctant at all, “but I will be bathing. Tonight. I have been sweating all day long and I have sand in a few places I would rather it not be, in addition to the… obvious.”

Keith cannot help but glance down at a few spots where he hadn’t been so thorough in wiping up the mess staining Shiro, now cooled and half-dried.

“Fine. But you won’t be doing it alone,” he relents, sighing as Shiro happily falls into lockstep with him now that he’s gotten his way.

“Good. I would happily have your company anyway,” Shiro tells him, bumping his shoulder into Keith’s as they set off up the hilly, wildflower-lined path that cuts toward the other side of the island.

There are only fading traces of red-orange sunlight reaching across the sky by the time they reach the spring. The freshwater pool is backed by dark, craggy cliff faces of dark stone covered in ropey, waxy-leafed vines blooming with white flowers. The water itself is crystal clear and comfortably warm to the touch; through it, Keith can see the white sand and pale, moss-covered stone that line its bottom, even by the day’s dying light.

He stops by the hollow of a tree where they’ve been storing their shared bathing supplies: a meager supply of soap, oil, dried roots and herbs, and a coarse brush for scrubbing, all tucked away within an oiled leather bag. It’s a far cry from the relative luxury Shiro had known on board his ship, with a private washroom and costly, finely milled soaps, but out here it serves them well enough. Shiro has never complained, anyway, as far as Keith knows.

Keith rifles through the bag’s contents and lays out everything they’ll need on a flat, smooth rock along the spring’s edge. And when he glances up, the task finished, he is gifted with the sight of Shiro stripping off his shirt, hanging it on a nearby tree branch, and then shucking off his trousers right after.

Keith has never seen so much of him bare all at once—that broad, scar-laced torso, that impossibly lean waist, those powerfully thick thighs, the soft outline of his length under white-peppered curls of dark hair. It rouses something hungry in him, eager to pick up that thread they’d left on the beach and follow it to some deeper, more complete satisfaction.

“No time to waste,” Shiro reminds Keith as undoes the loosened bow of his hair ribbon and leaves it with the rest of his clothing.

He wades into the spring first, ducking underwater as soon as he stands chest-deep at its center. When he reemerges, it is with a silklike curtain of black and white slicked to his head and shoulders, water dripping from his lips and snaking down his chest.

Keith tugs off his own clothes in a hurry, leaving them carelessly piled on one of the mossy stones just a few steps from the water in his haste. He makes no effort to hide his enthusiasm—he can’t, really, with his own body laid so bare and this thing between the two of them already lit like the fuse of a long nine. He practically throws himself into the water after Shiro, sending out a sloshing wave as he lunges forward.

It’s not particularly graceful, but it is effective. Within a heartbeat, Keith is so close to Shiro that he thinks he can feel the beat of his heart through the water.

“It’s already getting dark,” he murmurs, only faintly complaining. It is hard to remain too mulish about being out about the island after nightfall when he has Shiro naked in front of him, a tall and sturdy wall of well-formed features and artfully-sculpted muscle.

“And isn’t it lovely?” Shiro asks, tipping his head back to look up at the deepening sky.

The first smattering of stars are already peering down on them, bright and twinkling as the last dregs of daylight vanish like candlesmoke. The night is clear and pleasantly warm, just a mild breeze coming in off of the sea. In the forest around them, a few birds still chitter and sing.

“It is,” Keith can’t help but agree, his gaze more fixed on Shiro than their lush, spectacular surroundings. “But don’t complain when we walk through a dozen spiderwebs on the way home.”

It’s a hollow threat, and maybe Shiro knows it. When they leave the spring, Keith fully intends to take the lead, sword drawn, and cut down anything and everything that would give Shiro even a slight inconvenience.

Shiro insists it will be faster if they help wash each other, and Keith is not fool enough to say a word against him.

He can’t remember ever having someone else’s fingers in his hair like this, tenderly rubbing up the back of his neck, under his hair, and over his scalp. It just about turns him to porridge-like goo, ready to lean into Shiro as he melts away, utterly content. 

It is just as pleasurable when Keith’s turn to wash Shiro’s hair comes around. He works their makeshift yucca-root soap into Shiro’s hair and combs his fingers through the wet sleekness of his locks, feeling privileged for the opportunity. And when he starts smoothing his hands down around Shiro’s shoulders, dragging the herbal-smelling suds with him as he scrubs at sandy, dirt-smudged skin, Keith can hear Shiro’s sigh even over the nighttime wind rustling the nearby trees.

The sky overhead is full dark, aside from the waning moon and brilliant rivers of stars. That is to be expected.

What neither of them expects, though, is the way the oft-visited spring changes at night.

“Look at that,” Shiro murmurs as the moss that coats the bottom of the spring and the nearby stone begins to glow, pale and diffuse, like distant starlight brought near.

Little motes of light even seem to drift through the water around them. Keith can cup his hands and catch a few glimmers of it, staring in awed surprise as he rolls them around in his palms. They’ve bathed here dozens of times already—though never after dark—and he supposes that if it did them no harm then, it should do them none now. 

“I have read a few naturalist journals that mention something like this,” Shiro says, swishing his hand through the water and grinning as the light shimmers brighter at the gentle agitation. Even the blooming, trumpet-shaped flowers on the nearby vines possess a faint glow by night. “I never thought I would witness it for myself, though.”

“Hm. It complements you,” Keith says, toying with the ends of Shiro’s hair, where the white strands hold an ethereal shimmer unlike anything Keith has ever seen.

“Looks better on you, probably,” Shiro counters, immediately dumping a fresh handful of water over Keith’s head and leaving a little cascade of glowy motes in his hair, too.

Keith sputters and immediately goes on the offensive, sweeping both hands across the surface of the spring to splash Shiro right back. And as Shiro laughs and raises his arm to shield himself, half-turned from the spray of water, Keith presses the attack. He grins and slaps a particularly fierce wave of water into Shiro, pausing only to admire the way the glow of it trails down the other man’s chest, and then he barrels forward.

He pushes bodily into Shiro, grasping for his arm and some purchase on his hip, ready to—to wrestle him? To hold him down? To pin him once more, like he did against that tree along the beach, only this time with clear purpose in mind? Once his hands settle on Shiro’s bare skin, it seems like anything less will never be enough.

Keith’s desire, intense as it is, still feels hazy. So he grapples playfully with Shiro just to touch him, glad for the way it helps sate that need for contact. He sends water splashing into Shiro’s face and ducks away when Shiro tries to do the same, pushing and pulling each other all around the spring.

“Should I be beating you this soundly in the water?” Shiro laughs as he hooks his foot behind Keith’s ankle and sends him flailing backward, stirring up the glowing moss at the pool’s bottom. “Seems like you ought to have some advantage over me.”

“I think it’s different if it isn’t the ocean,” Keith sputters out as he bobs back to the surface, wiping his face and shaking the wet hair from his face.

In retaliation, he swiftly dives back underwater and launches himself directly at Shiro’s middle, dragging the other man under with him. They kick aimlessly, their legs knocking and intertwining as they roll through the water. They slip in and out of each other’s grasp. They break to gasp for breath, laughing, before the unspoken little truce breaks and one of them lunges for the other, neither yet willing to throw their hands up and admit some kind of defeat.

And amid all the furious splashing and exertion, their tussling turns to something else.

The first time, Keith doesn’t even think before he wrests Shiro close and plants his mouth on the man’s shoulder, leaving a rough kiss above the scar he’d made a small lifetime ago. And the next, it is as if something entirely has possessed him; he lunges up, hands braced on the sloping muscle of Shiro’s shoulders, and claims him with a ravenous, toothy kiss on the lips.

In one natural, fluid movement, he draws his legs up and wraps them around Shiro’s waist, swallowing down the surprised noise that issues from the other man’s mouth. Keith nearly purrs when Shiro’s arm reaches under him, holding tight to his backside as he supports the unexpected weight thrown against his front.

Lost in his own hunger and desperation, clinging to Shiro and trying admirably to wolf him down, Keith doesn’t even register being carried—not until he is trapped against one of the smooth, moss-laced boulders that borders the glowing spring, pinned between it and Shiro’s broad front.

Keith half-gasps out a laugh. “Is this payback for how I pinned you earlier?”

“Maybe so.”

“Mm. I like it.” Keith coils his arms tighter around Shiro’s neck, easing him in closer until their foreheads meet and their noses brush and Shiro’s breath falls on his parted lips. “And I want you.”

“Oh?” The heavy, husky quality of that one word makes Keith’s skin shiver and his spine burn. Voice low and dripping with sultry amusement, Shiro asks, “How?”

Keith pulls his bottom lip in between his teeth and holds it there, torn between blatantly whining for exactly what he needs and meeting Shiro’s teasing in kind.

He opts for something that lies somewhere in the middle, meeting Shiro’s mischievously intent stare with one that matches it for intensity and exceeds it in heavy-lidded desire. “Every manner imaginable. All the ways I wouldn’t let myself dwell on as we slept aboard the same ship, barely ten feet apart, just a couple of walls between us. I’d like you over me, under me, around me, in me.”

For emphasis, Keith gives his hips a roll, letting Shiro feel just how hard and heated he is for him. And though the light given off by the freshwater spring is faint, he can tell it has the desired effect—Shiro’s cheeks and the tips of his ears darken, his skin flushes warm, and the whole of his body thrums against Keith’s, gently grinding him into the stone at his back. 

“We can certainly scratch a few things off of that list, here and now,” Shiro assures him, voice graveled in Keith’s ear.

Disappointingly, the pressure against Keith suddenly lessens as Shiro peels backward. A strong hand remains firm on his wrist, though, tugging him along toward the same stretch of shore where Keith had left all their bathing necessities.

“Shiro,” Keith murmurs, half a plea and half a question.

“Patience,” Shiro encourages as he angles Keith toward another pale stone along the spring’s shallow edge—smooth and fairly flat, though resting at a gentle, sloping angle—and pushes him against it, belly down, half out of the water like a beached shark.

Keith hisses at how cool it is against his wet skin, most of the day’s sundrenched heat already ebbed away. The nighttime breeze is warm and mild, at least. And Keith thinks nothing more of the temperature or the goose pimples rising along his arms once he feels Shiro’s hand slide up along the backs of his thighs and in between his legs, his fingers searing and perfectly slick.

He recognizes the scent as the same oil Shiro sparingly runs through his hair to keep it smooth and lustrous, a remnant from the supplies in the longboat; judging by the warm slickness dripping along Keith’s skin, coating it slippery, Shiro has been awfully liberal in its use this time.

Keith grips at the rock under him as Shiro’s fingers slide higher, venture deeper, an oil-coated fingertip sweeping a circle around his entrance. His breaths go harsh as a firm, pleasing pressure mounts against him, Shiro waiting patiently for Keith’s flesh to yield to his touch.

“At ease,” Shiro whispers from somewhere above and behind Keith, his thumb stroking tenderly along the curve of Keith’s backside.

Keith can’t even fix the pieces of a word together in his mind. He is unmoored in the best of ways, almost lost to his surroundings—except for Shiro’s proximity, his heat, and the grounding firmness of the wet, moss-coated rock under him. And all that slips even further from the forefront of his mind as Shiro’s finger slowly breaches him, opens him up.

Excitement buzzes all the way down to Keith’s toes, which curl within the springwater still lapping up above his knees. The purposeful prodding and curling of Shiro’s finger is enough to make his hips lift and his body twist; it only feels better when another finger joins in, easing him wider with torturously slow movements.

Keith drops his head to the stone he rests on, cheek cushioned on its water-polished surface, and bites his lip. When he finally musters the energy to speak, it is to moan out the only name that matters. “Shiro… haven’t I waited long enough already?”

Shiro’s low, need-roughened huff could almost pass for a laugh. His fingers give one last, deep push into Keith before they retreat.

And before Keith can miss their absence, he is overwhelmed by a new sensation—that of Shiro dragging his hips back, lifting them up to a sharper angle, and letting a significantly more substantial part of his anatomy poke and prod at Keith’s ass.

None of it is complaint-worthy. Keith thinks nothing of shame as he pushes back against the hard, heavy length rubbing against him, eager to have Shiro wholly. He clenches his jaw as the slick pressure against his entrance builds, anticipation working his insides into fisherman’s knots; he stops a whine just behind his teeth when the head of Shiro’s cock loses purchase and slips aside, Shiro cursing under his breath as he tries to steady it with a firm hand once more.

And for all the slow, gradual build up that makes Keith want to thrash and rake his nails through the mossy stone underneath him, the moment that things finally begin to move, they move quickly.

A surprising length of Shiro slips into him all at once, the sudden success taking them both by surprise. Shiro’s frustrated moan gives way to a breathy exclamation, while Keith stifles a cry against his forearm, teeth marking his own flesh, and curls his toes into the sandy, watery gravel under his feet. He loses what thin threads of control he retains as Shiro steadily inches deeper, his jaw going slack and a lengthy, half-muffled moan slipping out past all of Keith’s defenses.

“Good?” Shiro asks, somehow nudging even further in as he leans forward, his breath billowing steam-hot against Keith’s blush-burnt ears.

Keith’s mind and mouth alike feel overheated, sticky, incapable of forming even a single discernable word. With sweat beading along his brow and down the dips of his spine, all he can do is nod and move his lips in some soundless attempt at speech.

Lodged within Keith right up to the hilt, Shiro spares no time in bringing himself to cover him like a rutting animal. His hand falls over one of Keith’s, curling his fingers into the gaps between Keith’s to link them together. Resting much of his weight on one strong, bent arm, Shiro drapes himself over Keith’s slighter frame and settles in, careful of crushing him breathless against the mossy stone—not that Keith would mind terribly, regardless.

There is nary a gap left between them as Shiro’s hips at last begin to rock into him in earnest. That perfect feeling of fullness never leaves Keith, mercifully. The cock buried so deeply inside of him never withdraws even halfway before Shiro hurries to close that sliver of distance once more; its pleasing heft and curve grind incessantly at places in Keith that only ache more needily with every little thrust. And his own hard length, caught between his own slick belly and the polished surface of the stone, enjoys the wet friction it finds.

Trapped under Shiro’s strong, flexing body and pinned as he is ardently filled to the brim, Keith thinks he might just weep for the staggering pleasure of it—of being given over completely to the lone person he trusts with his life and his love and everything else, wanted just as fiercely as he wants.

He tosses his head, smiling though panting breaths as Shiro’s lips touch his brow and the tip of his nose buries itself in damp hair, nuzzling with affection. The hand clasped around Keith’s squeezes tighter. And he can feel it when Shiro’s head drops forward and his pace quickens; Shiro’s already-labored breaths turn harsh against Keith’s nape as he bucks harder, their wet skin noisy where it meets.

A particularly forceful thrust leaves Keith gasping for air and scrabbling at Shiro’s forearm, as desperate for more as he is for a quick and blessed release from the sheer overstimulation of it all. A few more strokes, and all he can do is close his eyes, rub his cheek against the stone to cool his feverish skin, and moan approvingly as Shiro vigorously chases the release he deserves just as dearly.

And it is the minute throb inside of him that gives way to surging, dripping warmth that makes Keith come again, too, for the second time in less than an hour.

Though Keith would happily remain like this for the rest of the night, falling asleep with the reassurance of Shiro’s weight cast over him, he is just as content to be drawn up in Shiro’s embrace, pulled against a broad chest, and leaned back to lazily float across the spring’s moonlit surface.

Eyes blissfully shut, Keith relaxes, boneless as a jellyfish as he drifts with Shiro. A hand dredges water up and splashes it over his stomach, washing him clean once more. And then those fingers find their way into the ends of his hair, combing and toying with their ends.

After a moment, Shiro murmurs, “Next time, I will try to be a little more courteous.” A pause. “I let my excitement get the better of me a few times, there.”

Keith can’t see Shiro’s face at the moment, but he can easily picture his faint blush and polite awkwardness. He smiles to himself and says, “I like your excitement getting the better of you. Please don’t try to be a gentleman with me, Shiro.”

At his back, Shiro moves with the rumble of low, pleasantly amused laughter. “That is easily managed. I have a good many ungentlemanly thoughts around you.”

Keith smirks and rolls over in Shiro’s loose, floating grasp, wanting to see his face, his expression, his all-too mesmerizing eyes. “Is that right? I’d like to hear more about that. Maybe get a firsthand demonstration or six. Is it too soon to go again?”

“Again?” Shiro asks, nearly sputtering as he straightens up lets his feet touch the bottom of the spring once more. “Are you not weary? Did I not take enough out of you already?”

“You did, you did,” Keith quickly assures, his hands rubbing soothingly on either side of Shiro’s trim waist. With a satisfied grin, he adds, “And you put plenty in me, I think—” 

“Don’t be crass,” Shiro chides, and it’s a good look coming from a man who still looks rather debauched himself—his hair loose and tangled, his torso marked with half-formed lovebites, his skin flushed with both embarrassment and some lingering arousal. “Let’s not overdo anything on our first night. We have nothing but time to ourselves here, do we not?”

They do, and Keith contents himself with the knowledge that they have mornings and afternoons and nights to make up for lost time and explore each other to their hearts’ content.

They do end up indulging in another round once they’re back within their shelter, though, because Keith cannot resist the siren call of Shiro’s lips and splayed thighs, and Shiro cannot deny him. And, once they both lie breathless and utterly, sleepily satiated atop the piled quilts and rushes, Keith recalls a gift he has been meaning to give Shiro for some time.

By the dwindling firelight, he rummages through his scant belongings and pulls out a tiny leather pouch. Inside are the pearls that Krolia gave him—waiting, as Keith has, for just the right moment. 

“Do you like pearls?” Keith questions as he rolls back toward Shiro, who lies there half-shrouded in darkness with a gleam on his skin and drowsy, drooping eyelids.

“Of course I do,” Shiro answers before immediately succumbing to a yawn. “Who doesn’t? When I was younger, I had a set of gloves with pearl buttons up the sides. Black deerskin. White pearls. Silk lining. Loved them, ‘til I outgrew them practically overnight. Damn growth spurt.”

Keith laughs softly as he empties the contents of the bag into his cupped hand, the pearls softly clicking against one another as they spill forth. With his thumb, he spreads them around. The more subtle aspects of their colorations may be lost under the firelight, but Keith can still plainly see which are black, blue-tinted, creamy ivory, or pure, lustrous white. One even holds a faintly reddish hue.

“Shiro,” he whispers, propping himself up on one elbow and holding the handful of pearls out before Shiro. “How about these?”

Shiro’s eyes sluggishly flutter open once more, his vision unfocused. His gaze drifts until it finds Keith’s hand practically under his nose, and then he blinks faster, brow scrunching as he realizes exactly what Keith is holding.

“Oh. These are lovely,” Shiro comments, picking pearls from Keith’s hand one at a time to curiously peer at their luster and color. “Better than what I have seen at any jeweller’s, honestly.”

“They’re for you.” Keith pours the pearls into Shiro’s hand before he can even think of refusing.

“For me?” Shiro asks, suddenly far more awake. “Keith, I—”

“I have no need of them,” Keith insists. He had never even had a taste for fine things until Shiro came along. “And I would rather see you wear them, anyway.” 

Shiro smiles, close-lipped, and sighs through his nose. The pearls piled in his palm are perfectly sized and shaped and pretty to look at. “Very well. Thank you, Keith.” And then, with a wry little twist to his smile, he asks, “What shall I do with them, though? If you want to see me wearing them so badly.”

Keith hums as he helps Shiro return all the pearls to their little pouch. “Once we’re back in the world with everyone else, we can commission some fine leatherworker to make you a pearled pair of gloves just like the ones you loved. Or maybe have them fashioned into a necklace? A bracelet? Anything you like, really.”

“All very good ideas. But I do think you should keep this one, at least,” Shiro says, carefully pinching a red-tinted pearl between his fingers. He places it in Keith’s hand and then curls Keith’s fingers closed around it. “It suits you.”

Keith smiles, the blush-colored pearl warm as an ashy little ember where it rests in his palm. “If you insist.”

“I do.”

* * *

Time passes in scorching, lethargic afternoons, in soaking downpours that hang over the island for days on end, in clear, temperate nights spent tangled together under the stars.

There is a war raging out there still, beyond the thin strip of ocean horizon that borders their island existence, and Keith is not eager to return to the fray. Not at the beck and call of the navy, at least. And to his mild surprise, neither is Shiro.

“They have managed this long without either of us,” Shiro says the first time Keith brings it up, shrugging. “If the mantle of captain still waits for me, I am not certain I want it. Not from them. And I don’t think Krolia would be very pleased with me if I were to lead you right back into battle,” he adds, tone dithering somewhere between joking and worriedly serious.

It takes them somewhere around four months to finish—in large part because Shiro and Keith often find themselves more preoccupied with each other than with carpentry—but finally, the Interloper stands ready to sail once more.

Over dozens of trips, they empty their caveside camp and load the ship’s hull with all manner of preserved food and their accumulated island treasures, which range from rare shells and quality timber to Krolia’s many fine gifts. It is strange, seeing the place they had come to call home suddenly barren once more, every sign of habitation stripped away. But the feeling only lingers for the length of an afternoon—home is found wherever Shiro goes, after all, and Keith knows they can make a life together here, on the sea, or anywhere else they so choose.

Keith arrives with one last, hefty bundle of green coconuts and dried squid just in time to see Shiro take a blade’s edge to a plank near the Interloper’s bow, delicately shaving off the name painted on its side.

“Bad luck to change the name of a ship,” Keith comments as he gets his baskets down and takes a seat in the sand beside Shiro, tired from another full day of making preparations.

Shiro turns to him and casts a frown over his shoulder. “Given that the Interloper and its crew met a less-than-fortunate end, I would say a rechristening is in order. Besides,” he adds, his slightly glum expression giving way to a warm, almost mischievous smile, “do I really need luck with you around?”

Keith laughs and stretches out atop the sand, absolutely content to let Shiro do anything he wishes. “No, you certainly don’t. I’ll make sure we have nothing but smooth sailing from here to Port Altea. I promise.”

“Oh, very confident, are we? I thought your mother said you still need to master the finer points of pulling tides around,” Shiro mutters as he turns back to the now-nameless ship.

Keith pouts and puts a finger to the damp sand, idly drawing out a figure of Shiro and a three-headed Cerberus, like the one that had once decorated the ship upon which they’d grown close. “I can capsize a bothersome ship if I need to, don’t you worry.”

“Not worried,” Shiro shrugs, now holding in his hand a brush dipped in the black paint they’d found tucked away below deck. “So, what should we name her?”

“You choose.” Keith has never fancied himself one for bestowing names on much of anything. Even the Songbird’s title was inherited. “No ‘Eurybia’s Star,’ though,” he immediately tacks on, knowing Shiro is just sentimental enough that he might.

“No, no. That’s for private, personal use only,” Shiro quickly agrees, a soft, ruddy pink warming his skin. He taps the wooden end of the brush against his cheek, thinking for a few long moments. “How about… Atlas?”

“The Atlas,” Keith muses, making a show of humming thoughtfully and mulling it over. “Mighty big name for an awfully small ship.”

Shiro shrugs, unable to argue that. Never one to give up easily, though, he quickly makes a case for his preference.

“This awfully small ship will carry so much that matters, though,” Shiro justifies, turning to give Keith a tender, sweetly coaxing look. “Its cargo is at least equal to the weight of the heavens, don’t you think?”

Ah. Keith opens his mouth, finds no words, and lets out a pointless, airy little laugh instead. Shiro means him, does he?

“Hm. It certainly is,” Keith murmurs in agreement, except it is Shiro that he considers the most precious passenger the Atlas will carry. The man is more important than the heavens, really; Keith could learn to live without the guiding map of the stars, but not without Shiro. “Alright. Atlas it is.”

Shiro grins and sets to painting each letter with painstaking attention to detail, cursing under his breath each time his hand wobbles. The end result, though, is near perfection.

They drag the bedding out from the Atlas’ cabin and sleep on the deck that night, under a waxy moon and a breathtaking spread of stars, with the steady sound of the ocean at their backs.

Morning brings the first day of their voyage.

Krolia arrives with the tide, greeting them both with a call to wake and the heavy slap of a fresh swordfish hitting the deck.

They wash up and dress and get way not long after dawn, eager to make the most of what looks to be a bright, clear day. Keith wraps his arms around Shiro’s middle, while Shiro in turn braces himself in the doorway that leads to the Atlas’ comfortably tiny cabin. All around them, the white, sandy beach vanishes under a sweeping tide, seawater burbling all the way up to the grassy treeline. The ship rocks as its keel is dislodged from the sandy bed on which it has rested for nearly half a year, buoyed up and gently carried out of the shallows on the receding tide.

And once the Atlas is ferried safely beyond the reach of any underwater sandbars or shoals, Krolia emerges from the sea with a gleaming smile, her handiwork finished.

“Are you certain you have everything you need?” she asks for the dozenth time, her nails scratching against the outer hull as she looks up at them from the splashing sea.

“Yes, we are all set, thank you!” Shiro calls out in the same breath that Keith sighs, “If you give us anything more, we might sink.”

“Very well, then. Enjoy your journey. And know that I will never be far,” Krolia assures them both, smiling as she trails her palm down the Atlas’ side and sinks right down into the waves, vanishing in a swirl of inky water, bubbles, and milky foam.

With his elbows resting on the railing, Keith smiles into the sea breeze that tosses his hair and tickles at his nose. Krolia had adamantly insisted on escorting them across the ocean on their ship’s maiden voyage, and he had gladly acquiesced—he and his mother still have many years of conversation to make up for, and there is no safer way to travel the sea than in the company of a powerful siren. 

And although Keith has come quite a way in his own right, now able to purposefully harness the power he had only unintentionally drawn on before, an extra pair of hands to keep Shiro safe is always welcome.

He turns from the rails and finds Shiro fussing with the ropes and the rigging, grunting as he unfurls the main sail on his own.

Keith runs his hand down Shiro’s back as he passes on his way to the helm. “Where to, Captain?”

Shiro scoffs and wrinkles his nose at the title. He follows right on Keith’s heels, his footfalls heavier, sturdier. “I think upon this ship, we’re both captains. Jointly.”

“Two captains, huh? Isn’t there a proverb about that?” Keith asks, feigning ignorance. He tips his head up to better meet Shiro’s stare. “‘Two captains sink the ship,’ maybe?”

His smile grows as Shiro, straight-faced and steadfastly determined to be unamused, leans in close enough for their noses to brush. “Fuck that proverb. Joint captains.”

With that, Shiro straightens up once more and resumes getting the surrounding deck shipshape, making sure every coil of rope is neatly secured and every repaired stretch of rail is still sturdy.

“Fine. We’ll both be captains, then. I’ll be deferring to your judgment nine times out of ten, anyway,” Keith remarks, refusing to let Shiro slip out of the role he’s best suited for.

Shiro tips his head back and sighs. Not without fondness, though, generously layered under his thin exasperation. He meanders close again, his hand settling naturally at Keith’s hip. “You don’t miss captaining your own ship? Calling the shots, as you did on the Songbird?”

Keith hums and eases into the weight of the palm against him. His hands dance over the spokes of the wheel, testing the steering of the small, flighty cutter in the water. Whether it is the ship itself or just Keith’s deepened connection to his siren nature, the Atlas responds to his every touch with easy, agile immediacy.

It is a deeply satisfying feeling.

“I don’t much long for the past, no. Besides, I enjoy taking your orders,” Keith points out, looking back over his shoulder at Shiro. “Be they maritime or personal.”

“Personal, hm?” Shiro echoes under his breath, intrigued. “I will keep that in mind.”

Manning a ship—even one as small as the Atlas—with just two people is an arduous undertaking. There is much to be done both above and below deck, especially as they first set out. He and Shiro had undertaken a number of necessary repairs, the integrity of which must be thoroughly tried and observed: making sure the bilge doesn’t flood, that their new mast can handle all the rigors of gusting wind, that the ropes and rigging all hold up in use.

There are other things to be tested, too.

Once out in the vast expanse, Keith lifts his hands from the helm and concentrates instead on the currents underneath the Atlas, on the water that grips against its hull and pulls at its rudder. Where he’d once only read the tides and subtly, unknowingly bent them in his favor, Keith can now manipulate them outright.

He folds his hands behind his back and paces away from the wheel, watching as its spokes barely waver from the course he’d set.

“Look at you, showing off,” Shiro calls from a spot closer to the bow, his hip leaned against the railing.

He looks right at home being back at sea, the wind playful with the silken strands of his moonlight-white hair and the faint sheen of seaspray on his skin catching the morning glow just right. Keith can’t help but mourn the loss of Shiro’s captain uniform—he had always cut such a striking, handsome figure in that ornate navy coat and the fitted white of his waistcoat and breeches—but there is a powerful appeal in seeing the man in civilian attire, too.

Keith has Krolia to thank for the fine, perfectly-suited pieces that he and Shiro both wear, brought back to their little island whenever she returned from the mysterious obligations of her calling as a siren of the deep. And he is grateful for her good taste, for Shiro is no less striking dressed in all blacks and warm greys, looking every bit the desirable nobleman he is.

Keith smirks as he wanders closer, pleased that Shiro had noticed. But Shiro had always noticed the way he sails, had always admired it, had always had faith in what he could do if given the trust to do it. “What do you think?”

Shiro’s eyes flit back to the stern, where the helm sits steady all on its own, the waves and the wind doing the lion’s share of the steering. “I think that if we hid below deck, the Atlas would look like a proper ghost ship. Especially with my spotty patchwork on the sails.”

“I think you did a fine job with them,” Keith insists over Shiro’s grumbling otherwise. “Fine enough to get us back to a friendly port, certainly. And from there…”

Keith doesn’t know where, precisely, they will go from there. Queen Allura will surely want Shiro to call on her, once she knows he is alive and well and free of the enemy’s clutches. The Kerberos’ former crew will no doubt want to see and hear from their much-loved captain as well. And Shiro will of course wish to visit his mother and brother again, to reassure them after the news of his presumed death; that his father will also be present, a dismal cloud over what should be a happy affair, is a damn shame.

Whether or not Shiro will want Keith’s company on this obligatory visit to his family’s ancestral home is still a matter of question, though. Shiro is understandably vague when it comes to talk of his parents, and Keith has no desire to force himself into an already awkward arrangement and cause his love an even greater inconvenience. It would last only a week or two, probably. No more than a month.

Keith fiddles with his gloves—the same ones Shiro had gotten him, painstakingly restored after suffering ugly salt stains and waterlogged lining—and nibbles his lower lip.

“From there, we will decide where we go and what we do next,” Shiro finishes for him, tenderly tucking a loose lock of hair back behind Keith’s ear. Then he winks. “Together. Every step of the way.”

“Mm. Together,” Keith agrees, forever enamored with the sound of that word coming off of Shiro’s lips.

Or any word, really. There isn’t much Shiro says that does not further endear him to Keith. The love of his life may not possess any siren blood of his own, but his voice is more than captivating enough without it. And this close, bubbled in the comforting reassurance Shiro always offers, Keith feels spellbound.

He shuffles closer, his boots nudging into the toes of Shiro’s larger ones, both pairs cut of a similar sable leather. Keith curls his gloved hand and runs the backs of his knuckles up the silvery brocade of the waistcoat Shiro wears, admiring the feel of it—and the firm muscle resting just behind it, flexing under his touch. 

With a sigh, Keith grips the front of Shiro’s knee-length coat and wrenches him a little closer. The material is a lush, grey velvet that stretches just right across Shiro’s shoulders and complements his eyes. Keith thumbs at one of the intricately carved ivory buttons that studs the coat as he tips his chin up and finds Shiro staring intently down at him, both affection and sultry want gathering in the wells of his eyes.

“Captain?” Keith curls his fingers deeper into the lapels of Shiro’s coat jacket, quietly encouraging him to lean down and in.

The corners of Shiro’s mouth curl upward, and it is clear that he is trying very hard not to outright grin as he answers with, “Yes, Captain?”

“Permission to kiss you?”

“Granted,” Shiro says, already given over to a winsome, toothy smile. “Consider it standing permission, honestly.” 

There, leaned against the Atlas’ narrow bow, he slides his fingers under Keith’s jaw and lays an ardent kiss on his lips—lips that immediately give way and invite more, which Shiro is only too happy to give.

And as Keith winds his arms up over Shiro’s shoulders, drapes them around his neck, and blindly undoes the neatly tied ribbon that fastens the pretty length of Shiro’s hair, he is exceedingly and eternally grateful that they finally have a ship all to themselves.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it practical for them to be dressed so nice while they’re sailing home? No. But they deserve to look stylish and extra hot for each other.
> 
> You can find me here [on twitter!](https://twitter.com/saltisochi) There are some thoughts that didn’t make it into the story itself that I’ll try to add here, too, and answer any questions about things I’ve forgotten to mention:
> 
> At the very end, Shiro was lingering by the bow and letting himself feel the tiniest bit sad that the Atlas doesn’t have a figurehead like the Kerberos or Calypso did. He eventually mentions it offhandedly to Keith, who takes it upon himself to design one, have it carved, and get it mounted. (Regular brain: typical bearded titan Atlas to match the ship. Big brain: a dog, to remind them of the Kerberos. Keith Galaxy Brain: what if Atlas… but sexy and very much resembling Shiro?)
> 
> Shiro does explicitly find out that it was his very long and abiding love for Keith that made him immune to being lust-stricken by Keith’s singing. During one of his convos with Krolia, Shiro mentioned being curious about hearing her sing. Krolia, without wanting to reveal more than Keith had seen fit to, very much wanted to make it clear to Shiro that he is not immune to all siren song, but one siren’s song. For reasons. On his own, Shiro pondered those reasons and why Keith might keep them from him, when he’s always been so forthright—even with a great and terrible secret like being half-siren, which he couldn’t even keep from Shiro more than a few days. And based on what he’d gathered from dozens of little conversations here and there (Keith’s father was unaffected by Keith and Krolia’s singing, while Shiro is unaffected by Keith’s) Shiro quietly surmised that feelings of the heart might have something to do with it, and that Keith might have been reluctant to say as much… because it would be tantamount to admitting that he had feelings for Shiro.  
> He is amused to find that he was semi-right, except the whole thing hinged on him instead. Whoops haha.
> 
> After receiving a hero’s welcome from a very pleased Allura and paying a tense visit to Shiro’s family, they are left to decide where to go and what to do next. Ultimately, neither Shiro nor Keith goes back into the navy. They have their own ship now, small as it is, and decide to try charting their own course for a while. With a privateer’s commission from the queen, they’re free to sail and to fight at their own discretion—and between Krolia’s frequent visits to the Atlas and Keith’s growing command of the sea, their ship is both well-protected and shockingly effective in a fight.  
> From time to time, their friends from the navy spend time with them in port or join for short voyages. No one can stand how overtly amorous they are for long, though.
> 
> Lotor and the Sincline were victorious! But between the Purification’s parting shots and the storm, they took considerable damage and lost sight of Keith, to Lotor’s considerable frustration. For the next seven months, he believed Keith and Shirogane were drowned amid the conflict and resigned himself to informing Allura of as much, through some very indirect channels.  
> So when he first hears rumors of the Red Shrike returning from the dead, he doesn’t believe it. But the talk never stops, and it sounds like Takashi Shirogane also survived—somehow?—and the two castaways managed to sail back to port after months lost at sea. He is understandably dumbfounded the first time they cross paths in a lawless port town and sure enough, they’re both alive and well—and Keith somehow seems even more mysterious and dangerous than he was before.  
> Lotor is intrigued! Deeply! But not enough to risk running afoul of the warning glint in Keith’s eyes as he walks the market with an arm looped possessively around Shiro’s waist.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me here [on twitter!](https://twitter.com/saltisochi)


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